The Confession of Usami Renko
by taiyakisoba
Summary: It's a fact that super-unified physics student Usami Renko can no longer ignore: she's in love with her best friend, Maribel Hearn. When their two vastly different worlds, the worlds of reality and fantasy, of subjectivity and objectivity, come crashing together, will their friendship become something more, or will everything prove to be just an empty dream?
1. Chapter 1

**The Confession of Usami Renko** by _taiyakisoba_

_Smart girls are cool._  
_-ZUN_

My name is Usami Renko and I am in love with my best friend.

It wasn't love at first sight. The first time I saw Merry was not long into my first year at Kyoudai. I'm a student there, studying super unified physics, although recently I've been dabbling a lot in M-theory as well, a result of the various things that have happened to the two of us on our adventures. But I guess I'm getting ahead of myself.

She was standing in the quadrangle outside the cafeteria with a freshman's guide in her hand and a lost look on her face. I was on my way to a lab, but I stopped when I caught sight of her from the corner of my eye. Now, there are lots of foreigners studying in Kyoudai, but Merry, well... tall and slender, with long blonde hair and a face with all the delicate beauty of a porcelain doll, she really stands out. I might as well just come out and say it: she's beautiful. Sometimes I think the word itself was created just for her.

There was nervousness in her violet eyes as she looked up from her guide and asked another student walking past a question. The student was Japanese and she shook her head, made a short apologetic bow, and hurried away. When the same thing happened a second time, the flustered look on Merry's face drove me to do something I wouldn't usually do.

I approached her.

Now, my English is pretty terrible, and I knew all too well the reason the other students had avoided her. There's nothing more frightening to a Japanese person than a foreigner who wants to ask you a question. We all learn English, of course, but when we say we know English, it really just means that we understand it. Speaking it is a whole different matter.

"Can I help you?" I asked, with all the English I could muster.

"Oh, you speak English?" This was in fluent Japanese and I blinked. She had barely any accent. In fact, her Japanese was that of a native Kyoto-ite, and it took me a while to realise she'd actually answered me in my own language. It occurred to me then that she'd probably spoken to the others in fluent Japanese as well, but they'd been as surprised as I was and hadn't even recognised it as such.

I quickly learned that her name was Maribel Hearn and that she was studying relativistic psychology. It was the student administration block she was looking for. I was already running late for my lab, but I told her I'd take her there. I know I could have just given her directions, but there was something about Merry that I liked immediately.

Now don't accuse me of being driven only by appearances! Merry's a beauty, it's true. But it wasn't that that drew me to her initially. I've always being attracted to the unusual and the mysterious and there was an aura about her. Should I call it an otherworldliness? It's the wrong word, though. She is most definitely down to earth, for all her mysterious powers.

But again I'm getting ahead of things.

As we walked together, it was my turn to introduce myself. She seemed impressed by my major and I was surprised and delighted at how much she seemed to know about physics. When I remarked how good her Japanese was, Merry blushed and said that it was nothing at all to be proud of, really, since she'd grown up in Japan. Her family was from England originally, but her father and her mother had moved here while she was a child. They'd since returned to England and she'd stayed on here to continue her studies.

And so on, the usual kind of stuff you talk about with another student when you first meet them. When Merry said she'd lived her entire life, more or less, in Kyoto, and since I come from boring-old rural Tokyo originally, I joked that I was actually more of a foreigner here than she was.

It was a dumb joke, but Merry laughed at it anyway. Her laughter was surprisingly unrestrained, animating her entire face, the sort of laugh that you usually only see from a child. There was so much joy in it that the world seemed a little bit brighter afterwards.

I left her at the student administration block and she thanked me with a bow. I wandered off to my lab in a daze.

I didn't see Merry again for a while after our first encounter. It wasn't from want of trying, though. I found myself loitering outside the cafeteria, as if expecting to see her reappear in her guise as maiden in distress. I also began to make completely inefficient detours from my lecture rooms to the labs by way of the psychology block. At the time I didn't realise I was hoping to run into her.

It was about a week later that I finally ran into her again.

She was sitting at a table outside the university café. I was walking past when I caught a glimpse of sun-gold hair from the corner of my eye and I stopped dead, much as I had the first time I'd seen her.

She was sitting at a table with a young man. A very handsome young man. The two were talking in an animated fashion but I couldn't make out what they were talking about.

I stood and watched them. One of them must have said something funny, as they both suddenly burst into laughter. Then I saw Merry reach across the table and touch the boy's hand.

Panic gripped me. And once again I did something I never usually would. I approached the table and said hello.

Merry's violet eyes went wide in surprise. "Renko!" she exclaimed, getting to her feet. The boy looked at me inquisitively. He smiled and bowed as Merry introduced me to him and he did a very, very good job at politely hiding his annoyance at my interruption.

I accepted their invitation to sit at the table and I ordered myself an espresso. Merry was impressed by the mature sophistication of my choice, as she put it. It was my turn to blush. Then I looked about in a panic: with the boy there, I was feeling nervous. I'm not usually a very social person, you might have already guessed. I searched around for something I could talk about and my eyes fell upon a book sticking out of Merry's tote bag. It was entitled 'Elements of Parapsychology'.

It was my lifeline. I drew attention to the book and mentioned how I was interested in occult matters as well, which was absolutely true.

Merry's eyes lit up and she expressed surprise that a scientist would be interested in such things.

I explained how there was more than enough space in the universe for alternate worlds and other phenomena to exist. Supernatural was a misnomer, though, since nothing that exists within nature could be said to be beyond nature. It was merely that we were dealing with phenomena that had yet to be explained by science.

And so on. I quickly learned that Merry was at least as knowledgeable in the subject as I was. She was careful to try and include the boy in our conversation, but he rapidly became bored. After a while he made his excuses and left.

As I watched him go I felt a surge of victory. But now, looking back, although I don't regret what I did for a second, I do feel bad about it. I also feel a little bad for Merry, as well. I think, in those early days of her time at the University, I took possession of her, scaring everyone else away, not just that handsome boy.

It's here I should explain something about myself. I am proud to say that never, ever in my life has anyone ever confessed to me or shown even the slightest bit of romantic interest in me, either male or female. A love-note in the locker was something that happened to other girls, or in a TV drama. If a boy ever talked to me, it was to ask me a maths question. Everyone knew I was good at maths.

I was disappointed by this at first, but eventually I got used to it. It wasn't like I was bullied or anything like that. I was just passed over. And I couldn't blame them. I am, after all, staggeringly plain. I'm not saying this to look for pity or to fish for compliments like a lot of girls do, but just as a statement of objective fact. Note I said 'plain', not 'ugly'. Everything is in the right place, and each item is not bad when considered individually. But taken as a whole, I guess the sum of the parts just leaves people rather unimpressed.

Except for my eyes. I'm quite proud of my eyes. They're unusual, and if I have a charm-point, it's most definitely them. Merry has often remarked on how striking they are. But where mine are striking, hers are most definitely beautiful: the beautiful violet eyes of a foreigner that it's hard not to be jealous of. But sometimes they can be unsettling as well...

I realise now that I had more-or-less staked my claim on Merry as my new best friend. She would have other friends in her classes, but no one would ever get closer to her than me. Boys kept away from her - I guess it was a side-effect of my lack of popularity with them, almost as if it had rubbed off on Merry. Like I said, I feel guilty for that now, but back then I didn't. Back then I was overjoyed. I had Merry all to myself.

That first day at the café, as my next lab and the time we had to part loomed, I told Merry that I was a member of a club she might be interested in. It was called the Sealing Club, and I explained that its purpose was to investigate reports of supernatural phenomena.

What I didn't tell her was that I had invented the club there and then. It was just an excuse to see her again without having to orchestrate another accidental encounter.

Merry pleaded with me to let her join. I said I'd bring her a membership form next time I met her. After we said our goodbyes, I skipped my lab and spent the afternoon at the student admin building filling out form 13CA: application for the registration of a student club or activity.

Merry was surprised at the first meeting of the Sealing Club when the only other one there was me. But when I explained I was the club's sole member, she laughed. She seemed impressed, actually. The sort of behaviour that others found peculiar in me, Merry always seemed to like.

Our first field trip was to a nearby temple which was supposedly the centre of poltergeist phenomena - the throwing of stones and unexplained fires and the like. It was merely a coincidence that there was a delicious cake shop just across the road from it that served excellent coffee.

We didn't find any ghost, but there was certainly something odd about the temple. As I picked my way through the moss-covered ojizousan and tried to read the half-obscured kanji of the kaimyou on the graves, Merry stopped and looked out across the grounds. Her eyes were glassy, as if they were focusing on something far away.

I asked her if she'd seen anything. Her eyes came into focus again and she turned to me and shook her head. I sighed and said that since we probably weren't going to find anything we should abandon the investigation and go have some coffee and cake.

The early expeditions of the Sealing Club usually ended up like this. It wasn't until we'd become closer that Merry told me she could things - the 'borders' between things, as she put it. It was an ability, she told me, that many in her family had. She described it as a 'spiritual vision' that let her see into the dream world, but I hastened to disagree with her.

"I think you're actually seeing alternate worlds," I told her before wandered off into a long-winded and very pretentious explanation of the multiverse theory and how my own theory was that all so-called supernatural phenomena were actually intrusions into our universe of alternate realities.

I remember the conversation quite clearly. It was late at night and we'd stopped off at a little yakitori stand to eat dinner after investigating an old kofun that I'd read some interesting stories about on the net. It had been a washout like usual. The yakitori was pretty bad, even for synthetic, but it was hot and we were ravenously hungry. The sake, served out of a huge 2-litre plastic bottle, was also sub-par, but went down a treat. Merry was drinking half for every one of my drinks and I'd become quite vocal. The guy behind the grill listened politely, but I couldn't help noticing his smile as he turned the skewers over on the charcoal.

I finished my lecture to find Merry beaming at me.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Renko, you really believe me, don't you?"

I blinked at her. "Of course I do."

Her slender hand slid onto mine, wrapped around the glass tumbler filled with cheap sake.

"Thank you, Renko," she said. "I knew I was right to tell you."

I stared down at the hand as she took it away. My heart started beating again.

It was the first time she ever touched me.

Merry went on to explain that her parents long ago had taught her to keep her ability a secret. It was something that made people uncomfortable.

"It doesn't make you uncomfortable?" she asked, with surprising shyness.

I shook my head. "I have an ability too, you know." I pointed up at the stars. "Do you see Lyra up there?"

"Yes."

"If we calculate the angle between it and Scorpio, drawing a vector through Vega..." I went on for a while like this, revelling in my own brilliance. "...it tells me that it's exactly 9.38 and 41, 42, 43 seconds. Look at your phone."

"You're right," she said with a gasp. "How did you do that?"

"As long as I can see the stars, I can tell you what time it is, anywhere on the surface of the earth. Now, if you want Universal Coordinated Time, I need to do a few quick calculations. If the moon was up, I'd also be able to tell you exactly where we are on the surface of the earth." I realised I was boasting and I stopped, embarrassed. "I mean, if we didn't already know exactly where we were."

"That's amazing," said Merry. Her smile was radiant.

We said our goodbyes outside her apartment. It was in a very opulent block indeed. You know, even though Merry's family is incredibly rich I've never detected even the slightest bit of snobbery from her. She's happy to eat at yakitori stands and ramen yatai and beef-bowl places or wherever. I guess it was this strange mix of being so down-to-earth while also being mysterious that was one of the things that made me fall in love with her.

Fall in love with her? Oh, yes. That's right. After the security point had scanned her and she'd waved goodbye, I found my eyes lingering on her back until the gate finally shut behind her and blocked her from my view. I stood there a while longer, feeling suddenly lost and alone.

It was a long walk back to my own modest accommodation. And every step of the way all I could think about was her.

Looking back, I realise now that that must have been the day I truly fell in love with her. I think it might have even been in the moment her hand had touched mine. Stupidly sentimental, I know, but a completely reasonable conclusion based on the objective evidence:

1. The effect on my heartbeat when she touched me, indicative of physical or emotional stress;  
2. My sudden melancholia at being separated from her, and;  
3. The overpowering desire I had to see her again as soon as possible.

That night I didn't sleep. The next day I was a total wreck in all my labs and I found myself yawning through every lecture. Even if I hadn't been so sleepy, there was no way I would have actually learned anything anyway. At the end of quantum mechanics I found that the only thing I'd written was the title of the day's topic ('Phase Space Formulation') and underneath it Merry's name.

I'd been trying to work out how she'd write her full name in English. Merrybell? Maybury?

I ended up just writing 'Merry' over and over again.

It wasn't until I saw her again that I felt even halfway myself once more.

At the time I thought it was some weird crush, so I was careful not to act all lovey-dovey around her. I mean, there's no way she'd want the attentions of an odd, mousy thing like me. It was pretty stupid, really. Merry made it hard, though. She's a very affectionate person. After that night at the yakitori stand, we ended up on hugging terms. I've never really liked being hugged by people - it's not something I remember my parents doing to me much as a kid - and I think the first time she hugged me I just stood there, stiff as a statue. But it was hard to stay like that with the soft, fragrant warmth of her body surrounding you. And so I quickly learned to hug her back.

I started to hang out for those hugs like an addict. Did I mention that Merry smells really nice? A clean, sweet, wholesome scent - like vanilla, I think. I got the chance to smell real vanilla once, at the botanical gardens in Tokyo. It's the seedpod of an orchid and it needs a beetle to pollinate it. That particular beetle is extinct now, like so many other animals, and they had to make a little robot to do its job for it. You see, it needs to move in just a certain way to make the flower give up its pollen. A bee or anything else just won't do it for this picky flower.

I was allowed to crush the edge of the pod between my fingers. The scent of real vanilla is like 3D to the two-dimensional smell of the synthetic stuff. It's warm and organic, the fragrance of open flowers and warm tropical forests. It was that smell that I associated with Merry. Even after we parted, it always clung to my clothes.

It was maddening.

The Sealing Club became more successful, after a fashion. Now that I knew Merry had this special ability, I was eager to put into action. And with each expedition it seemed to grow stronger. Merry, of course, still didn't agree with my contention that she was receiving information on a quantum level in some way from a real world parallel to our own. No, for her they were always glimpses into a land of dream and illusion.

She called the place Gensoukyou. It was the name, she said, that its inhabitants gave it.

I never got tired of hearing her stories about it. Her adventures in the bamboo forest, the great scarlet mansion on the shores of that lake of mist… but she remained convinced that it was her own dream world she was seeing rather than an alternate dimension.

But it was after she started to bring back artefacts that things really started to get interesting.

When she showed me the cookies, I didn't believe her at first. I thought this was one of her jokes - Merry has an unexpectedly wicked sense of humour, and when delivering a joke she's so good at keeping a straight face that I've been taken in more than once. But there was an eagerness in her face as she showed me the cookies; no, more a need in her eyes, a need to be believed. I guess it was the same look that she must have given me at that yakitori place all those months ago, if I'd noticed it at the time. Even if only one person believed her, she could be happy.

And so of course I believed her.

Now, for my part, you can't bring cookies back from a dream world. Real cookies means a real place. When I told her I believed her, I actually meant that I believed the cookies came from Gensoukyou, not that they'd come from her 'dream world' or anything like that. I was sure that Merry was travelling in some real fashion to an alternate dimension. But it was no use arguing with her. She was convinced that it was all due to her dreaming that Gensoukyou existed.

The cookies, dream or not, turned out to be delicious.

Merry told me all sorts of things about Gensoukyou, so much so that I had become to be a little jealous. Not in the way you might think. I wasn't jealous of Merry's ability or her imagination. No, it was Gensoukyou itself I was jealous of. It had captivated Merry, just as I dreamed of captivating her.

By this time I knew something was up between us. It wasn't something I could explain away as a crush any more. At times the intensity of my feelings scared me. My eyes began to linger on her, and my hand would linger on hers as well. We became so close we even started to sleep together - wait, that's the wrong way to put it. Share a bed, I meant to say, like girls at a pyjama party. Merry had a four poster bed. She was embarrassed to show it to me at first - she said it seemed a bit childish, now she was showing it to someone, to have a four-poster bed in an apartment - but I thought it was charming. There was even a stuffed okapi toy tucked under the covers, his head resting on the second pillow.

Lucky okapi.

After a long study session and some chatting - the usual girlish stuff, like the recent unification of the weak magnetic force and gravity - we'd slip under the covers. Merry would be out like a light almost right away. I'd lay there, her warmth and fragrance beside me, staring at the okapi that always made its way into her arms, wanting it to be me who was being pressed up against her breasts, those surprisingly large breasts that seemed all the larger beneath her rather old-fashioned nightdress. It was an exquisite kind of torture. I could never sleep properly, so I'd just give and watch her sleep instead.

It was actually lot less creepy than it sounds.

The pale light which eased its way into the room from the arched French windows always made her face look like it was carved from marble. I was jealous of her looks: her pale complexion, the pinkness of her lips, the dark heaviness of her lashes. No, not jealous. Covetous. I wanted them. They were mine. She was mine.

Except that she wasn't.

Stupid okapi.

It was only a matter of time before the Sealing Club discovered a place where the border was weak enough for Merry to pull the two worlds together, and it was in that mist-filled graveyard in Rendaino where the lycoris grew in profusion that we had our first major success. It had started as another likely wild-goose chase, of course: a photo of "the Netherworld" I'd found on a forum I'd prefer remain nameless. But as Merry and I picked our way through the grave markers I couldn't have cared less whether we found anything or not. Being with her was the only thing that was important to me.

When we finally broke through the barrier we were delirious with our success. We ran laughing through the graveyard together, the pink petals of an otherworldly spring falling all about us. I took her hand to help her over a fallen fence, and kept hold of it even after we'd made it across. We ran together, hand in hand, and for a moment I felt overwhelming joy. For a moment I deluded myself that she knew my secret, and that she shared my love as well; that we were together.

When we reached the front gate, my hand slipped from hers. The delusion fled. I felt suddenly desolate, just like I did whenever I said goodbye to her outside her apartment.

That night, alone in my own bed, I dreamed of Gensoukyou.

Was it really a dream? Or some left over power that Merry had granted me? Whatever it was, I walked beside that misty lake she had so often talked about. It was night. There was a moon out, a gigantic silver-blue disk in the heavens. Everything was flooded with glacial light. It was so beautiful.

She had been so beautiful, dancing among those swirling cherry blossom petals.

If it was a dream, it was a vivid, lucid one. Everything had an aspect of hyper-reality about it. I could look down at my feet and see every little blade of grass, individually delineated by that bath of icy light.

I walked beside that lake for what seemed like hours. Eventually a redness appeared across the water as I followed the suddenly curving shoreline. Lights, a habitation: a gothic building with glowing red windows. It was a place Merry had told me about: the mansion of the vampire girls.

I felt no fear. It was just a dream, after all. But I was never to make it to the mansion. The dream fled, melting away as morning daylight swung onto my face from my bedroom window.

I never told her about it. I guess part of me thought of it as just a dream, but that couldn't have been the only reason. I think it was more I didn't want to steal something that was so precious to her. I wanted her to keep Gensoukyou as her own.

I was also worried she'd realise how I felt about her if she knew her world had begun to appear to me in my dreams as well.

I saw Gensoukyou many times in my dreams, but I always kept it to myself. I enjoyed the dreams. They were private jaunts into Merry's reality and I treasured them as much as I did my own waking-life glimpses of the place on our field trips.

I always felt like I had part of her with me, even as I slept alone.

-

When Higan came around I invited Merry to come with me to visit my parents back in Tokyo. She didn't have anything planned for the university break so she jumped at the chance. I was glad for the company. The trip between Kyoto and Tokyo only took 53 minutes by shinkansen, but in that time we talked about a number of things that had started to weigh on my mind: objectivity versus subjectivity, stuff like that. But no matter how eloquently I argued, she remained unshakable from her conviction that what she was experiencing was a dream. Humans, she said, are in essence virtual beings.

To Merry's way of thinking, dreams are just as real as what is usually termed reality.

I don't buy that, though. The multiverse is a big place, after all. It has a lot of space for as many objectively real Gensoukyous as you might like to put in it.

When we changed trains at Bou-Tokyo station we were pretty much all argued out and the maglev suburban all-stations, being much slower, soon lulled us into a strange half-sleeping state. We'd been facing each other on the Hiroshige shinkansen, but here on the maglev we sat beside each other. Merry was soon nodding off ('fishing' is what I call it) and before I knew it she was resting her head on my shoulder.

I think I must have gone stiff, because she lifted her head off with a sleepy murmured apology. Moments later her head was right back where it had been, but this time she didn't wake back up.

I let her keep it there. I read a book for a little while, but I couldn't concentrate on it and ended up staring out the windows on the opposite side of the train instead. Tokyo looked like it was melting in the setting sun. The whole cityscape, so humble compared to the great skyscraper-filled one of Kyoto, was glazed with molten copper. Eventually it cooled to black as darkness set in, and then it sprang back to vivid life again as lights flickered on everywhere - the yellow false-daylight of the office and apartment blocks, the red warning lights at the top of the skyscrapers. The flashing lights of suborbitals coming in to land at Haneda glimmered like fireflies across the sky. I felt her soft breath on my neck, the rhythmic beat of her breathing as it deepened into sleep. I slipped my hand into hers, and she stirred. She opened her own hand and entwined her fingers with mine.

I was so happy I wanted to cry.

The carriage became quieter. I began to see the stops that showed me we were soon reaching the station nearest to my family's home. I woke Merry and as she lifted her head from my shoulder her hand slipped out of mine.

We stayed with my parents for several days. They were as charmed by Merry as I was, and as we sat eating my mother's cooking and listening to my dad pontificating about the state of local politics, I was flushed with happiness. It was as though I'd brought my girlfriend back to meet my parents and everything was going well.

We slept together in my old room. I offered Merry my own bed, as I had a futon on the floor, but she refused to take it from me.

"There's enough space for the two of us," she said.

There was, but only just. During the night, I awoke to find her sleeping face right next to mine. The gentle sweetness of her breath was blowing soft against my own lips. Only her okapi, which she'd brought with her, lay between her and myself.

After that I got no sleep.

The visit to the family gravesite went well. If Merry saw anything, she didn't tell me about it, and I didn't ask her. For once, it was nice to be with her outside of the whole 'Sealing Club' thing. We were on holiday, after all, although there wasn't really so much to do around old agricultural Tokyo except go shopping: and shop we did. Merry revealed herself to be an avid shopper. I personally enjoyed the coffee breaks more. I think I ate more cake on that trip than I ever had in my life up til then. I'm a little too partial to tiramisu and sacher torte. I'll admit it: I have a weakness for sweet things.

Afterwards we went to karaoke and drank too much. I regaled her with my renditions of 20th century anime theme songs. I have a deep voice, so it was more suited to stuff like "Uchuu Senkan Yamato" than "Sailor Moon". Merry, however, preferred to sing enka.

Such a strange girl. Even with her blonde hair and violet eyes, she often seems more Japanese than I am. She sang "Don't Smoke in Bed" and her voice was so sad and sweet that for a moment I felt as though I was the lover she was singing to.

After we left the karaoke place we passed a huge number of couples on the street on our way back to the station. When Merry mentioned the fact, I drew her attention to a neon sign close to us.

It read 'Hotel Starry Night'.

We were walking through the love-hotel district.

Merry blushed. I stifled a laugh and taking her hand made as if to lead her inside. She put up no fight and I actually had her at the automatic doors when I lost my nerve and dropped her hand. She wasn't really serious, was she?

Merry just laughed at my shocked expression and stuck out her tongue.

That Merry! Such a joker.

That night I had another dream.

This time I was walking in a great field of sunflowers, taller than my head. I had to push my way past the great green stalks of the things to make progress and soon I began to panic. I had no idea where I was and the field seemed to go on forever. Maybe it did. And what made it worse was that the sunflowers moved, their faces turning towards me with malevolent intent.

I'd struggled for I don't know how long when I heard a rustling from the sunflowers behind me.

Someone was there, following me.

I swung round in alarm. The wall of stalks before me parted.

It was Merry.

She looked just as she always did whenever we met up after class: dressed in her trademark purple dress and hat. The only thing different was the look of surprise on her face.

Relief washed over me as I ran up to her. "Merry!"

She took my hands in her own, her face a mask of concern. "What are you doing here, Renko?"

I blinked. "I'm sorry, I... Wait. Merry, this is a dream, right?"

Merry chuckled at my question, but then the worried look returned to her face. "Are we really going to get into that argument again?" She turned and began to lead me by the hand back the way she had come. "We have to get out of here. This is probably one of the most dangerous parts of Gensoukyou, you know."

"So this is Gensoukyou," I said. I felt her hand burning into mine as she pulled me along, just like that night at the cemetery.

"What do you think?"

"It's beautiful," I said.

"Beautiful, but dangerous," said Merry. "You shouldn't have come here on your own, Renko."

"I didn't mean to," I murmured, suddenly guilty. There was an intensity in Merry's eyes, an intensity I don't remember ever seeing in them in the waking world.

And the smile on her face as she turned away. Knowing, and also teasing.

Merry led us on a wide, arcing path. She seemed to know exactly where we were going. Soon she pushed aside a final veil of sunflowers and we came out into a grass-filled pasture. Under the chill glow of the moonlight it had the appearance of a great Antarctic expanse.

I was panting. Even in your dreams you could get tired, I realised.

We walked a short way until we came to a group of large rocks. They were smooth and rounded and shone like mounds of piled-up snow. Merry let go of my hand and sat herself on one and patted the space beside her.

I joined her. The stone was night-cool underneath my bottom and I shivered even though I was wearing my shawl.

"Cold, Renko?" Merry scooshed herself closer. With her warm and fragrant body flush with mine, I soon warmed up. My face grew red, too. I could feel it. "We shouldn't be disturbed here. Youkai don't usually to come this close to the Garden of the Sun since they're afraid of its mistress."

"I'm really glad you found me," I said. "I was totally lost. Even the moon couldn't help me. I guess it's because it's different from Earth's." I gazed up at it glowing in the sky, a pure orb of unblemished yellow light.

"Actually, Gensoukyou and Earth share the same moon," said Merry. "It's just that here you can see its true face."

She leaned closer to me. I was enveloped in her scent and my mind reeled. So the hyper-reality of the dream extended to my sense of smell as well. Merry's voice in my ear was low, conspiratorial. "Renko, do you remember what you said to me just before the shinkansen reached Bou-Tokyo station?"

"About your dreams?" It was hard to think with her so close to me.

"Yes. I asked you to make a choice for me, remember? And you said I should make my dreams my reality." She turned and stared out across the snowy moonlit fields. "But you know what the funny thing is? There's really no difference between the two to begin with. Like Zhuangzi's story about the man who dreamed he was a butterfly and when he woke up he couldn't decide whether he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man." She turned back to face me. "Renko, now I realise the answer to that puzzle is that he's both."

I blinked. "So all of this is real?"

Merry nodded and the smile on her lips shifted. It was no longer teasing. Heat had kindled in her wide violet eyes.

She leaned over and kissed me.

I was so surprised I made no effort to kiss back. I just sat there, stiff, her lips warm and soft against my own. As she broke the kiss her teasing smile returned.

"Oh Renko," she breathed. "Was it really that bad?"

I started. I shook my head. No, it hadn't been bad. My heart was still shuddering inside my chest, beating so hard that it felt as though it had doubled in size. I brought my fingers to my lips. I could still feel the ghost of hers resting there.

My first kiss. And Merry had taken it. It still counted even though it was in a dream, right?

"Merry, why did you..?"

She laughed. "You're really, really bad at hiding your feelings, you know, Renko. You've wanted me to kiss you for a long time, haven't you? Am I wrong?"

I shook my head. I was doing that a lot, I realised, and so I struggled to get control of my voice. "Merry, I-"

She brought a finger to my lips, cutting me off. Then she ran a hand through my hair, brushing an errant lock back into place behind my ear. Her touch was gentle, but electrifying, and I couldn't stop myself from closing my eyes and leaning into her caress like a cat being pet.

When I opened them again, her face was next to mine. The porcelain beauty of it filled my vision, her violet eyes shining. And once more that teasing smile.

"Want to try again?" she whispered.

I was even more nervous than before, but this time I kissed her back. I wanted to make up for my disappointing first attempt. When her lips parted and I shared the heat and wetness of her mouth, I started to tremble.

Merry murmured in appreciation. She leaned across me, slipping her hands around my waist as the warm fullness of her generous breasts pressed down on my chest. I was surprised at how aggressive she was. I melted, throwing my arms around her neck and pulling her on top of me. Her lips slid from mine and began to make a burning path down my neck.

"Oh Merry," I gasped as I felt her undo the buttons of my blouse and her fingers slip between the material and my skin...

-

I woke up in my bed in Tokyo, my arms wrapped around Merry's stuffed okapi. Merry herself was gone, the only sign she'd been there her gorgeous scent. The whole bed seemed saturated with it.

I lay there, still trembling from that kiss. And I was wet. Soaking.

I clung to the okapi, breathing in her scent, trying to return consciously to the dream until I felt a sudden panic that she'd walk into the room and discover me. So I slid reluctantly out of bed. I found Merry in the living room on the couch, still dressed in her nightdress, reading the book of poems she'd brought with her from Kyoto.

She looked up. "Good morning. Did you sleep well?"

I searched her face. Her gentle smile hid no secrets I could see.

So it had just been a dream after all.

At breakfast, as Merry ate her usual toast and honey and I lingered over my coffee, I stole glances at her, struggling to think of a way to broach the subject. But how could I? I mean, even as a joke it was beyond the pale: "Hey, Merry. Want to hear something funny? Ha ha ha. I had an erotic dream about you last night. You rescued me from a field of scary sunflowers and then we made out in the light of the moon. Ha ha ha."

I chickened out of course. Even so, I couldn't stop from grinning like a secretive lunatic all throughout breakfast.

That day we went shopping again. We'd planned to go to the movies after lunch, but I'd read the session times wrong, so we ended up having to see a different movie to the one we'd wanted to.

A student of unified field physics and unable to read a simple list of movie session times. I plead the excuse that I was thoroughly distracted.

It was a stupid romantic drama set in the post-war period. In the darkness of the theatre my wandering mind quickly slipped back to the dream. It had seemed far away in the light of day, but here, with Merry sitting next to me in the darkened theatre, the light of the holograms gleaming across her face, I was reminded of the light of that alien moon.

I had no eyes for the movie, and instead stole glances her way as the different coloured light played across her skin. Pale, like the screen itself, it was the perfect canvas.

Her arm was lying on the arm rest. With my heart beating so hard I was worried she might hear it over the soundtrack, I slid my hand into hers, casually. Casually, like it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

Merry's face was still as a painted icon. She made no move to look at me, her eyes remaining focussed on the screen. Then she squeezed my hand and held it there in her own. I turned back to the screen, seeing nothing, all of my senses honed in on the warm tenderness of her hand surrounding mine, my heart filling to overflowing.

When the movie finished I had to let go of her hand, but as we left the movie theatre I felt as though I was drunk on joy itself. The light, the subdued grey light of Tokyo in September, seemed like a divine wash of brilliance to my heart. Everything was beautiful, so suddenly beautiful!

Especially her.

As we walked down the street, discussing the movie, I resisted the urge to start skipping. With Merry at my side that same feeling as before, that mixture of pride and covetous delight I'd felt when I introduced her to my family, took hold of me. It seemed as though everyone was looking at us. I know it was partly my imagination, that probably the real reason for all the glances our way was the huge grin on my face and our animated conversation. It was the sort of attention I would have fled from usually. At that moment it delighted me.

Yes, I thought at them, grinning all the while. Yes, that's right. She's mine. This beautiful girl is all mine!

We joked about how cheesy the movie had been, especially the heroine's dialogue, and Merry performed such a hilariously over-the-top rendition of her confession of love during the liberation of Berlin that we both burst into peals of laughter. We had to stop and hang off each other as we laughed and laughed until we were almost out of breath.

When we started walking again, I let my hand drop from where it had been resting on her shoulder and slipped it into hers.

Merry stopped. She gently removed her hand from mine and turned to me. The expression on her face was a mixture of awkwardness and embarrassment.

"Uh, Renko? Do you mind maybe not doing that? It's kind of... embarrassing."

I think I must have just stared at her a while before finally nodding. Even if I'd had something to say, I don't think I could've got it out anyway. All the joy I'd felt spilled out of me in an instant, leaving me shocked and numb.

We walked in silence for a few moments, but then Merry drew my attention to the intersection and remarked how surprised she was that Tokyo still had them, even though there were barely any cars anymore.

I took hold of the lifeline she'd offered me and threw myself whole-heartedly into the conversation that followed.

As I babbled on and on about everything I knew on the subject, I was worried I'd start crying, but I didn't. I felt dried-up inside, as if the unwarranted joy that had filled me before had left me hollowed out. There was nowhere for the tears to spring from.

I didn't much enjoy the rest of our time in Tokyo. When we took the shinkansen back to Kyoto, we spent those 53 minutes in almost total silence, Merry engrossed in her book and my eyes glued to the Kaleidoscreen. The images that played across it were beautiful, but somehow empty too. I was reminded of how Merry had called it a waste of time and what she'd said about dreams.

In the end, hadn't I just made the same mistake she had and confused my dream with reality? 


	2. Chapter 2

**The Confession of Usami Renko Part 2** by taiyakisoba

It wasn't so bad after a while. A number of things made it easier. When we left Tokyo, I felt that somehow my negative feelings, that yawning emptiness, had been left behind as well. Merry behaved just as she always had towards me, as if nothing had happened: there was no change in her hugs or her jokes or her limitless enthusiasm for the Sealing Club. It made it possible for me to believe I'd imagined the whole incident.

And so I did my best to act as though everything was the way it had been before.

Spending time with her on our ghostly field trips also helped. It was a relief to fall back into our old habits. My violent feelings for her, I decided, had burned themselves out. It had just been an unhealthy obsession after all. It was kind of her, really, to act as though it hadn't happened, to spare me the pain of humiliation.

But I never forgot the squeeze of her hand in the dark theatre, a memory which was irrevocably tied up with the deliciously sadness of my dream with the sunflowers. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel her hands entwined with mine as she ran her lips along my neck, holding me down almost as if we were wrestling, the weight of her on top of me.

But it had been a dream, after all. Just a particularly vivid dream, another symptom of my obsessiveness.

We soon had a new obsession: going to the moon. It was all over the news, the new shuttles they had taking people there. I wanted to see it more than anything else. We both did. I was reminded of the space-coffee that I'd been so excited about not long after Merry and I first met and I wondered whether they served it on the flight.

Merry, of course, being Merry, delighted me with strange stories of the moon's true face: the rolling dunes of gold and silver sand, the elemental violence of the Sea of Storms, the mochi-pounding rabbits with the highly-technological civilisation they had developed, the moon capital with its impossibly slender towers like pinnacles of ice.

I wanted to see those things more than anything else.

The tickets for the moon shuttle turned out to be far too expensive, of course, for two students, even if one of them did come from a rich family. I was devastated. I guess I was really still just upset about what had happened between Merry and me and I was projecting it on the whole moon-expedition idea.

Maybe I'd hoped that leaving the earth behind, if only for a little while, might help me escape the pain I still felt.

Then one night, after we'd had dinner in a little beef-bowl place we both liked (the pickled ginger I'm addicted to is free there, and the guy who owns the shop doesn't get mad if you really pile it on), Merry took me for a walk through the nearby rice-paddy fields. Rice is still extinct, of course, despite scientists' best efforts to recreate it, but the water lies there like it used to due to the lowness of the land and the old irrigation channels. Being on the outskirts of Kyoto, there were only a few lights. The fields were a grid of glistening black glass.

"Isn't the moon beautiful tonight, Renko?" Merry remarked as we walked along the causeway.

It was. It was huge. A perfect disk of buttery-yellow light, it shone upon us from two directions, from the sky and from the earth, where it glowed in reflection on the glass-still water. I was gripped by a sudden vision of them being the eyes of some vast spectral god lying on his side, his body invisible, half-buried in the ground.

Merry led me on a little further. There was an old shrine at the side of the causeway here, dilapidated by age. Its stone gods stared out at us from the darkness.

She knelt near the edge of the water and I did the same. She placed a hand on my shoulder and drew my gaze down where the moon shone in reflection.

"Look, Renko. Really look. Can you see it? The true face of the moon?"

I blinked. Something had changed as I'd stared at that bright disk of light, as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. I thought I could see the sparkling of those deserts, the glimmering of those great seas Merry had told me about. Then a shining jewel, like a star even brighter than the surface of the moon, burst into sudden life.

"It's beautiful," I sighed.

"The lunar capital," said Merry. Excitement tinged her voice. "You can see it?"

I nodded. I felt my chest tighten. "I wish we could go there. For real, I mean."

"Maybe we can," said Merry.

As she helped me to my feet my eyes fell on her and I gasped. Her hair was aglow, like it had drawn the light from the moon into each individual hair, becoming a halo of light. Her violet eyes shone, her face transfigured with joy.

At that moment she was so beautiful she was almost angelic.

Merry's voice, as if coming from far away. "Renko, look."

She brought her hand to my chin and turned my gaze away from her. I felt bitter disappointment, but it was replaced by wonder as I saw what was happening around us.

The world was changing. The dark shapes of the nearby buildings, the flickering lights of the city, were becoming pale as shadow. Even the ground beneath us was wavering, like we were looking at it through a sheet of flowing water.

The city and the darkening hills fled away and there shone in their place the most exquisitely beautiful skyline I have ever seen. A great luminous sea had appeared, as if quicksilver had spilled up out of the earth. On the horizon were amassed great dark clouds, their edges glazed gleaming white by the light of the landscape, lightning coursing within their hearts.

But more gorgeous still was the city that rose between them. Great towering buildings, delicate and slender like the glass of chandeliers or of melting glacial ice, they glowed from within with a dazzlingly pure incandescence.

We were looking at the city from a great distance. All about us were hills of gold and silver sand, the edges of the shoreline of that ocean of light, and beyond a forest of trees glittering like crystal.

Tears pooled in the corners of my eyes.

"We can only stay for a little while," said Merry. "Otherwise the Lunarians will detect us. They don't really like visitors."

She led me across those shores of sand. There was a river nearby and we crossed it by way of an impossibly delicate and intricately decorated bridge like a band of paper-thin silver lace. We were among the trees, then. I saw that they were festooned with fruit, each a perfect, unblemished pink.

Peach trees. On the moon. I laughed for joy at such an incongruous and beautiful thing.

I gazed up at the shining fruit. "Do you think we'd become immortal if we ate one?"

"I wonder," said Merry. "They're too high up for me to pick."

I turned to her with a mischievous smile. "I guess immortality is always just out of reach, huh?"

Merry stuck out her tongue at my terrible pun.

"I never knew you could take people with you," I said.

"Neither did I, until tonight." Merry's eyes shone. "Oh Renko, I've wanted to show all this to you for so long. Want to see something really cool?"

She led me along the little path in the sand until we came to a small copse of trees. Unlike the peach trees, these were slender and delicate and glistened like ebony. They were bare of leaves, but somehow all the more beautiful for that austerity.

Merry brought her hand close to a low-hanging branch and the tree stirred to life. Light surged within it and the bough blossomed with clusters of shining jewels. Turquoise and amethyst and tiger-eye and jade and ruby, every colour known to man burst into glittering being.

She turned to me, her smile radiant. "You try, Renko."

I darted forward and found a branch a little lower down that I could reach. I brought my hand to it, but there was no stirring of inner light, no sudden blooming of strange and gorgeous lunar fruit.

I tried again. Again nothing happened. I approached the trunk of the tree, brought my hand tentatively against it.

There was the slightest give, as of a light breeze pushing against my hand, and then my hand passed straight through as though it were a hologram.

"What does it mean?" whispered Merry. Her face was a mask of disappointment.

I noticed then that the trees about me, beautiful as they were, were wavering at the edges, like things seen through a heat-haze. Behind us, I saw that there was only one set of footprints on the lunar sand: Merry's.

So. All of this was a mirage: unreal, immaterial. It was the Kaleidoscreen on the Hiroshige shinkansen all over again.

It made little difference to me, as deeply enchanted as I was by the incredible beauty of the place, but Merry was desperately disappointed. She looked on the verge of tears.

"I'm sorry, Renko. I... I thought I could..."

I went to take hold of her hand, to comfort her, but I thought better of it. Instead I just shook my head and grinned at her. "It's still an amazing gift, Merry." My eyes drank in everything about me. "And to think I was so disappointed about not being able to go to our moon. They can keep that boring old ball of dust."

Merry's smile burst back into life. "There's no space-coffee here, though."

I gave a melodramatic sigh. "Maybe we could bring some coffee beans next time and get the moon-rabbits to pounds us up some."

We crossed back over the bridge and walked together across the sands of the moon, not saying anything, just enjoying the dreamlike beauty of the place and each other's company. Eventually the Earth rose over the stormy ocean, an exquisite blue-and-white disk against the volcanic-glass blackness of the sky. I gazed up at it. All my problems were so far away, here on the moon. It was such a pure, holy place.

I wondered if it were possible to stay here forever.

As if triggered by the thought, we were all at once bathed in white-hot light from every direction, the harsh acetylene of a dozen spotlights being shone right at us. Blinking and half-blinded, I thought I saw dark figures hopping around. Rabbits? I didn't know whether to laugh or scream.

But Merry had already grabbed hold of my arm and the landscape was shifting and melting away, like paint being smeared under an artist's fingers. We were back on Earth, standing in that silent paddy-field. Above us the moon went on shining, unperturbed, the dark rabbit on its face hiding the secrets I'd for a few precious moments glimpsed.

Thanks to her.

After that our field trips went farther and farther afield, deeper into Merry's Gensoukyou. Yet whatever was real to her continued to appear dream-like to me. I could touch things, but the force I exerted was little stronger than a breath of wind. It seemed I had all the substance of a dream in her reality.

Merry, however, could do as she pleased. She often brought little things back with us. I kept some on my desk, souvenirs of our adventures. I loved gazing across them: a polished stone, a cracked tea-cup, a bamboo-shoot. Each of them was a precious memory of being together with her.

We visited many places in Gensoukyou, but not the Garden of the Sun. Merry never suggested it and I was glad of the fact. I wanted to keep it safe, a precious memory, my own little secret. I was afraid that if we went there, I'd discover that it had, after all, really just been a dream. I was also afraid it would awaken those feelings from before, the feelings I'd taken so long to finally come to terms with.

No, that's a lie. I hadn't come to terms with them at all. That trip to the moon, the glorious smile on her face, the angelic halo of her hair, the brilliant shining of those violet eyes: they'd burned away all the lies I'd told myself and started to believe.

And just like the moon itself, spiralling around the earth, I knew there was no way I could escape Merry's gravity.

Then one day we travelled to the satellite called Torifune, and our adventures, largely carefree until then, took a dangerous turn. The attack by the chimera proved beyond a doubt to me that these places, despite my own spectral existence in them, were real. Whoever heard of being attacked by a dream? Merry pulled us out of there just as she had on that first trip to the moon, but even so I'm sure the chimera would have been unable to harm me. It was just a dream to me, and I guess I must have been just a dream to it as well. Existing on different planes, able to see each other but unable to interact on a physical level.

Merry's injury, however, proved very real.

Even though it was barely a scratch, I convinced her to go to the hospital with it. She kept telling me I was worried about nothing, but I dug in my heels. I can be very stubborn when I want to be.

Afterwards I stayed with her at her apartment. For all her outwardly brave face, I could tell she was shaken. She seemed distant, her fingers tracing her wound under the bandage back and forth.

That night, for the first time since the trip to Tokyo, we shared a bed. I was careful to keep to the edge, as far away from her as I could. During the night, though, I woke from a fitful sleep to find her arms wrapped around me from behind. She was hugging me tightly, the skin of her cheek burning hot against the nape of my neck. I went stiff, like I had in that dream of mine long ago, and tried to slip out of her embrace. Tears filled my eyes as I lay there, trapped. I bit my lip, but even so a sob finally escaped.

Merry stirred. Still half-asleep, she pulled away from me and sat up. Her face was flushed, her hair slick against her skin.

"Renko?" Her voice was little more than a whisper. "I don't feel so good,"

The heat of her body had not been my imagination. She was running a high temperature. I'd read about this sort of thing. Before all diseases were rendered extinct, it was a common sign of infection. I remembered what they used to do for it and ran to the fridge. I saw the panic on my face reflected in its mirror-like surface as I snapped at it to flash-freeze some ice for me.

The ice, wrapped in a tea-towel, did some good, but I knew I had to contact someone. I had no doubt the scratch was responsible. I grabbed my phone and rang the emergency number.

I sat with Merry, tried to get her to drink some water, but she kept refusing. It felt like an eternity, but it was surely just minutes, before light was spilling in through the window, dazzling light like the one which had enveloped us on the moon. It was an emergency flier's spotlight as it swung down over the apartment block opposite and landed in the street. In moments there were people everywhere, dressed in white and wearing masks. We were bundled out into a nightmare of darkness and light and fervent instructions.

As we were taken aboard the flier and strapped in, Merry was petrified. I slipped my hand into hers and she clung to it so hard her nails dug into my skin. The pain centred me in my own fear.

It was the first time we'd held hands since that day in Tokyo.

I'm not sure how long the flight took. One of the two officers who were flanking us, a young man whose blue eyes even behind the frightening mask seemed kind, told me that we were en-route to the imperial medical facility in Nagano.

When I asked why we weren't just being taken to a hospital in Kyoto, his eyes grew troubled and he said nothing.

Merry and I were kindly but firmly separated when we arrived at the medical facility. Two of the centre's medical personnel helped her into a wheelchair. Merry's face was flushed, her blonde hair matted with sweat, but she managed to turn her head and look at me. There was fear in her violet eyes.

I grasped her hand. It had no weight.

"Renko," she whispered.

"Merry, everything will be alright. I promise."

The fear in her eyes softened and a weak smile appeared on her lips. She squeezed my hand back.

Then they wheeled her away and I was hurried down the corridor in the opposite direction.

They kept me overnight, scanning me all over in a multitude of ways. It was cold and frightening process, but all I could think about was what was happening to Merry. A young doctor was my enthusiastic examiner. He seemed delighted to be involved in such a rare incident. I guess doctors don't get that much to do in this age where almost every virus and disease has been relegated to textbooks.

I begged him for information on Merry's condition and he was kind enough to send an orderly to find out for me. She returned to say that Merry was fine. Her condition had been stabilised and she was right now undergoing the same tests as me.

My results came out clear and I was released. I sat at the doctor's desk filling out the incomprehensible paperwork he had placed apologetically in front of me. I was still in the middle of it when the orderly from before came in. She whispered something to the doctor and then left.

"Merry?"

The doctor looked around the room then said, "Your friend's tests have come back positive for an unknown pathogen."

The pen dropped from my hand as it began to tremble.

"There's nothing to worry about," said the doctor quickly, disturbed by the force of my reaction. He leaned forward across the desk, as though to reach out and comfort me, but instead he sat back again in his seat. "It's just standard procedure, you understand. She'll be placed in quarantine until the pathogen is eradicated or runs its course."

I couldn't stop trembling. I pleaded with him to see her. The doctor said it was probably against protocol, but he eventually gave in. I'd grown hysterical, weeping like a crazy woman. I don't think he'd ever had to deal with someone in such a state.

Using his security card he slipped me in to the isolation wing where Merry was. The door to her room opened and I saw her lying on the bed against the far wall, on the other side of a glass screen that cordoned off her half of the room from the rest of it. She was dressed in a white smock. Everything was white in that room: the floors, the bed, the covers, her skin. Her hair the only thing that had any colour, a splash of gold.

For a dreadful moment I had a vision that she was a bloodless spirit, that the doctor had lied to me, that Merry was dead. I threw myself against the glass, calling her name.

My violent movement caught her attention. Her golden hair shifted as she turned over, the fearful look on her moon-pale face replaced by sudden joy. She slid off the bed and ran barefoot to the other side of the partition, placing her hands against the glass.

With tears in her eyes she mouthed words to me I couldn't hear. I can't read lips. Whatever she said to me was lost forever.

I pressed my hands against hers. The glass, only an inch thick, may as well have been an ocean for how it separated us.

"Merry, I love you," I whispered against the glass, kissed her hand through it. And then the door behind me slid open and there were orderlies everywhere pulling me away.

I was flown back to my apartment. The medical officer who went with me assured me that I'd be able to contact Merry as soon as she was better.

After he left, I slid down into the chair at my desk and took hold of the little cracked tea-cup sitting there. I remembered how we'd found it, among the ruins of that tea-party on the shores of that misty lake.

Tears poured down my face. I sat there, staring at it in my hands, and I guess sleep, or rather exhaustion, must have eventually taken hold of me.

The next thing I knew I heard music. Pachelbel's Canon.

I was lying on the floor of my apartment, the tea-cup beside me.

The music was coming from my phone.

I got up off the floor to look for it, every movement feeling alien to me. Maybe I hadn't moved for a very long time.

The phone was on my desk.

I didn't recognise the number on the screen. I didn't answer it straight away. I was too busy staring at the date.

It was three days since I'd returned to the flat. What I did during those days was, and still is, an utter mystery to me. I don't remember doing anything. I don't think I was even able to sleep. Just nothing, lost time, a blank.

I think it was a mercy.

I grabbed up the phone and answered it. It was Merry's father. He spoke to me in perfect Japanese, with the modulated tone of a government official.

Merry was going to be alright.

I remember collapsing back onto the floor and weeping uncontrollably, my eyes growing numb as tears coursed down from them, my chest aching with the sobbing that wracked my body. I wonder now what her father thought on the other end of the line listening to it all. It wasn't what I'd call an ordinary reaction.

When I'd finally calmed down, he told me that Merry had been moved to a sanatorium in the mountains in Shinshuu for observation. She was still recovering, so it was for the best that everyone give her the time and space she needed. As soon as she was better, he would contact me again.

Time and space. It was a funny choice of words.

After he hung up I cried some more. Then I stripped my greasy clothes from my skin and threw myself in the shower. The hot water scoured my filthy body until I was warm and wet and pink and reborn.

After that I dedicated myself to saving every bit of information I could about the things I knew Merry loved, in readiness for her return. Our shared interests in ancient prehistory and science and the moon and mythology and folklore and physics and astronomy and biology. I saved hours of streams for her to watch when she got better. It was like a religious ritual for me. Everything I searched out and recorded for her brought our reunion closer.

At night I went to sleep praying to see her in my dreams. But she never appeared. My sleep was utterly dreamless, a great gap of blackness from the moment I slid exhausted from the computer screen into bed to the moment I woke with the sun pouring over me.

The day her father rang me and said Merry was being released I cried again. It was getting to be a habit. I'd barely ever cried before and now it was my new hobby. He asked me if I would be able to travel to Shinshuu to pick her up, since they weren't in Japan.

It felt like pure joy rather than blood was being pumped through my swiftly-beating heart.

I caught a super express and was in Shinshuu soon after. Stepping out of the train at Nagano, I was staggered by the beauty of the snow-capped mountains, the crisp clearness of the delicious alpine air. It was an almost religious return to a living world after locking myself in my stuffy apartment for so many days.

The sun was setting when I arrived at the Mt. Togakushi Sanatorium. It was a long way into the mountains. The entire world was glazed in red-gold. The sanatorium was an imposing but attractive building, with wide parks all around it.

I found her standing near a gingko tree, gazing up at it, just as she had that peach tree on the moon. Her back was to me and I couldn't see her face, but there was no mistaking her.

I broke into a run, crying out her name. She turned in surprise, her hair catching fire with the dying light of the sun. When I reached her she fell sobbing into my arms. I couldn't cry. All I could do was crush her against me. Her face pressed against my chest I was enveloped in the sweet fragrance of her hair. I lifted her tear-stained face to mine, kissed her over and over. "Merry, Merry," I whispered, heart-sick. "I love you, I love you, I love you…"

Isn't that how it's supposed to happen?

Instead I stood there, just as I had the night I left her at her apartment after the conversation at the yakitori place, gazing at her with a mixture of longing and confusion. What was wrong with me?

Eventually Merry noticed me standing there. She turned and ran across the lawn to me. I raised my hand and waved to her. The smile on my lips felt awkward, even though I was happy.

I was happy, right?

Then why was I so afraid as well?

Her own smile was radiant. I knew she wanted to hug me, but when I made no move toward her she looked bemused and instead brought her right hand forward to touch mine, her fingertips feather-soft.

"Renko."

"Merry."

I think maybe there was just too much for us to say. And so we said nothing.

It was while we sat together under the trees waiting for the taxi to come that I couldn't stand it anymore and asked her what it had been like in the sanatorium. She laughed and said the last week was the most boring of her life. Aside from the fever, she'd suffered from sleepwalking and had seen visions of other worlds.

"So, just the usual, then," I joked.

She managed a weak smile. "The usual," she agreed.

On the way back into Nagano I filled her in with what had happened in the news while she'd been quarantined. Her face became animated and I felt a surge of happiness to see the same old Merry back.

As we enthusiastically discussed the recent discovery of the so-called Izanagi Object, I realised that until the moment we'd been brought back together I'd been sick as well, a sickness of the soul. With Merry beside me, talking as we always did, it felt like my life had suddenly started again.

But when the conversation came to its natural end, her smile faded and a distant look appeared on her face. At first I was worried it was a continuation of what had happened between us in Tokyo, but then I realised it wasn't distance from just me, but from everything.

We sat in silence. The wild landscape of mountains and forest that swept past outside the taxi seemed suddenly alien, a scene from prehistory. Merry stared out at it for a long time.

Finally, she turned to me and said, "Renko, do you believe in Hell?"

"Merry, you've been seeing things again, haven't you?"

She nodded. "I see things almost all the time now. Even when I don't want to, sometimes."

We decided not to rush back to Kyoto. I'd brought an overnight bag with some of Merry's things just in case, so it seemed easy enough to spend a day or two here in Shinshuu. Something was clearly on her mind. I knew she wanted to deal with it here before we went back to our normal lives, our so-called normal lives as students.

When we arrived in Nagano, instead of going straight to the ryokan I'd booked, Merry suggested we visit Zenkouji since it was close to the city centre. It was late and it was threatening rain, but I wasn't going to argue with her. There were fewer people there than usual. In fact, except for the shoutengai with its boring and predictable souvenir shops selling Shinshuu soba and Nozawa pickles and those poisonous-looking 'Happiness Doughnuts', the place was almost deserted. Everyone else had had the right idea: it started raining as soon as we arrived, so we expedited our exploration of the complex by going straight into the Inner Shrine. Merry wanted to see the Earthquake Pillar.

She stared at it for a long time. I found it less than impressive.

But then, Merry was seeing it on a totally different level to me.

Afterwards, we sat down on a bench. Merry seemed exhausted. I went to get her a drink from a vending machine, but the one I found was only accepting exact change. I doubled back to borrow some from her, but she wasn't where I'd left her. I looked around and found her at the statue of Binzuru, the physician disciple of the Buddha. She was standing on tippy-toes to reach his face, which she rubbed with the tips of her fingers. The significance of the act wasn't lost on me. Petitioners would come and seek the healing of injuries and diseases by touching the statue where their own body was afflicted.

It was such a little thing, and yet it broke my heart. I waited until she sat back down at the bench before I rejoined her and got the change. I made no mention of what I'd seen.

Merry seemed better after the drink. I don't know about Binzuru, but Orange 100% can do wonders. I drank my own slowly.

"I don't know how you can drink coffee without sugar," said Merry, grimacing.

I shrugged. "I guess I just like my coffee cold and black, like my heart."

Merry stuck out her tongue. "I wish you wouldn't joke like that."

"You're scolding me again. You must be feeling better."

She nodded. Then a mischievous smile popped onto her face. "Hey, Renko. Want to go do something fun? It only costs 500 yen."

I wondered just how much fun you could have for 500 yen, but I went along with it. Merry went and got the tickets and came back. She wanted it to be a surprise. She took me to a little staircase that led down to a tunnel under the temple.

I was about to ask where it led, but Merry just raised a finger to my lips.

We stepped down into the darkness. As soon as we'd left the little well of light pooling at the base of the stairs it was almost pitch black, the kind of darkness where if something happened, there would be zero witnesses.

With nothing for my visual senses to take hold of, my other senses took on an almost extrasensory perceptiveness. The sound of our breathing. The coolness of the slight breeze that wafted down the tunnel. The scent of wet stone, of earth. Merry's scent, an accent upon it.

"What is this place?" I asked.

Her voice seemed impossibly loud in the otherwise silent tunnel. "Acolytes used to undergo trials down here. Now it's just for tourists. There's a lock hanging down here somewhere, representing the door to Paradise. Want to try and find it?"

It sounded like fun, so I said sure. I opened my phone to use the light to guide us, but Merry closed it with a giggle.

"No cheating, Renko! You have to find it in the dark."

And then she slipped away and ran ahead of me. Her shoes slapped on the moist stone.

"Hey, Merry! Wait!"

Don't tell me she could see in the dark with those powers, too?

I stumbled through the darkness. I thought I might be eaten by a youkai. I may be a scientist, but I still have an imagination. I've never been a huge fan of the dark.

I was starting to enjoy a mild panic-attack when I heard Merry's voice from somewhere ahead.

"Renko, I found it!"

"Where?" I called out.

Silence. Or was that stifled giggling?

With nothing to guide me, I fell back on my other senses. Merry's scent, faint, leading me onwards.

"Renko, over here!"

The stone of the walls confused the echoes and I couldn't tell the true direction of her voice, but it wasn't far away.

"Merry?" Suddenly, movement. Something grabbed me in a bear-hug from behind. I screamed. But her scent was suddenly everywhere and I knew it had to be Merry.

The boobs pressing into my back were a dead giveaway, too.

"It's just me, Renko."

"So where's the lock?" I asked, flustered, as I slipped from her embrace.

Merry giggled. "I was telling a fib. I couldn't find it."

I sighed. "Maybe next time."

Merry's hand slid into mine. "Let's go. I want to see the Rokujizou next."

She started to lead me through the darkness back to the stairwell. That hand of hers. Always and only in the dark did it ever find mine.

With my senses heightened, her scent, her warmth, the softness of her hand was excruciatingly intense. I wanted to pull her to me, to sweep her into my arms, as she had done to me in the dream. I wanted to kiss her more than anything here, down in the darkness, alone together, in the place where there would be zero witnesses. Just us.

But I didn't. That dream slipped from my grasp, too, as her hand from mine when we reached the stairwell and light encroached back, restoring our sight. Outside, the rain had softened into the kind of mistiness that you often get in the mountains, creating the sensation that you're walking through the body of a cloud. It rose from the ground, like steam from some subterranean cavern.

The Rokujizou were on the other side of the temple complex, the stone statues of six Bodhisattvas. Their shadows loomed out of the steaming clouds, impossibly huge, shrinking back to their stone reality as we came to their feet. Their faces were distant, their eyes looking out into a space only they could see.

I had seen that look before. Many times. On Merry's face.

"They're supposed to be able to communicate with the sufferers in Hell," said Merry. She gazed at them for a long time, as if she could read something in the rain and wind-worn stone.

"Do you see something?"

Merry hesitated before shaking her head

I knew I didn't want her staring at them a second longer. "Hey. I read somewhere that the original scroll of the Tale of the Genji is kept here. I want to go see it."

Merry blinked at me, but then she laughed. She knew how big a fan I was of the novel. I'd dragged her to Uji a number of times, ostensibly to drink the tea there and go boating in the river. She knew my secret, though. I would follow the footsteps of Kaoru as he looked for his love who had been stolen away from him, wondering if he ever found her.

It's always seemed a terrible cruelness to me that the novel ends so abruptly where it does.

It took a while in those blustery, rainy grounds to find a priest. When I asked after the manuscript, to my disappointment he told me it wasn't on public display.

"We should come back and break in later," I whispered to Merry as he shuffled back to his priestly duties.

She stared at me, mouth open in melodramatic shock. "Renko!"

"Well, aren't we breaking and entering every time we go to Gensoukyou?"

"That's different," she said. "We're allowed to, since it's my dream."

"That chimera thought different," I said.

Merry went quiet. I shouldn't have mentioned it.

As we left Zenkuoji I thought that maybe it had been a mistake to go there. I was nursing a few dark thoughts of my own as well. Her hand, reaching out to me in the dark. She seemed more than willing to be with me when no one else was around. Was I really that much of an embarrassment to be seen with?

I glanced at my reflection in the darkened window of the taxi as the lights of the little houses on the outskirts of Nagano flew by.

The answer was staring me right in the face.

-

We checked into our ryokan, set in the countryside near Imai. It was all my idea. I wanted to stay somewhere nice and it had been a while since I'd been to one. As soon as we arrived we grabbed our complimentary yukata and our toiletry kit and went to the bath. The weather was still terrible and it was off-season, so like Zenkouji we had the place to ourselves. The outside bath had a curious little shrine set in the bamboo partition that separated the men and the women's baths. On our side there was a blind that you could lift to chat face-to-face with whoever was on the other side. The sign above it explained that there had been a number of successful matches as a result of such conversations.

"Hey Renko, want to try it out?" asked Merry, half-hopping, half-swimming across to it through the steam.

I snorted from where I was sitting under the little waterfall of fresh hot-water. It was the best part of any bath and I was shamelessly monopolising it. "Looking to get married?"

Merry stopped and turned to me. She shook her head. Her face was serious. I'd meant the question as a joke, of course, but for some reason she'd taken it to heart. Maybe it hadn't been a joke. I was in a pretty bad mood.

"I don't think I'll ever get married."

I blinked. "What do you mean?"

"I just don't see it happening," she said.

I didn't ask her if she meant 'see' in the traditional sense, or whether it was some reference to her ability. I felt terrible and decided the best thing to do was to just get the whole thing over with. "Why don't you open the blind, then? Maybe your future husband is on the other side."

"Do you really think I should?"

She waded the rest of the way then tentatively took hold of the little string-pull. She turned back and looked at me.

"Just do it," I said.

She pulled it and gazed through the little tunnel that was revealed.

"Hello?" she called.

There was no one on the other side.

"Well, it is the off-season," I said.

"But it's just before dinner. Everyone takes a bath now."

"I wouldn't make such a big deal out of it."

"I guess," she said, letting the blind slip back down.

"You know, Merry," I said, wanting to quickly change the direction the conversation had been going. I didn't want to ruin our time together just because of my damp mood. "The shrine reminds me of something I've been thinking about lately. Remember our trip to the Moon and to the Torifune Ruins? I think there's some connection between your ability and shrines..."

It always seemed safest to talk about stuff like that.

-

As I let us back into our room, I apologised for my selfishness at insisting we stay at a ryokan. I was still feeling guilty about how short I'd been with her in the bath and I was sure she'd gone along with it just to keep me happy.

"We should have stayed at a hotel in Nagano," I said. "After all the relaxing you did at the sanatorium this is the last place you'd want to stay at."

Merry laughed at how serious I was being.

"Oh, the sanatorium wasn't all that relaxing," she said. Then her laughter broke apart and she collapsed weeping into my arms.

I held her. Through the sobbing I managed to get the full story. After the virus had expended itself she'd recuperated almost immediately. In fact, she'd felt even better than before. But instead of releasing her, they'd taken her to the sanatorium, insisting that she had to remain under observation. The truth was, after observing her hallucinations at the medical facility, the authorities had grown concerned about her psychological state.

"Except it felt more like I was being kept prisoner than under observation," she said, her voice hoarse from crying. "They didn't stop asking me questions, trying to get me to explain what I was seeing, like I was crazy. My father must have used his influence to get me out. I think they wanted to keep me there forever." There was uncharacteristic fear in her eyes. "Renko, I'm scared."

I was, too. "Merry, you asked me if I believed in Hell before. You saw it, didn't you?"

The fear in her eyes grew starker as she nodded. And then it all came out. Her vision of the place under the earth. Straight out of the Kojiki. Pretty frightening stuff. A great yawning cave, like the maw of some hideous subterranean creature. The swarming of scuttling vermin and the stench of corruption.

Her description wasn't what alarmed me most, though.

It was that Merry seemed to think the vision meant she was going to Hell.

She didn't want to talk about it anymore and I didn't push her. The obasan with our dinner knocked at the door right at that moment and I don't think I'd ever been happier for an interruption in my life.

As we ate ayu sashimi and hot-pot and drank hot sake together, I knew that there was no use trying to escape from my feelings for her. I felt as though I'd been holding my breath the whole time she'd been away, and now that I could breathe again I'd flared back into life. It frightened me that she meant that much to me. I also raged silently at my weakness. I'd been trying and failing to get over her. With her illness and her confinement and now these strange visions of Hell, my desire to be with her, to protect her, had come crashing back over me, sweeping away my better sense with it.

But I was happy, too, even if I hated it. Even with all the worry I was so happy it felt like a kind of insanity. And it was all the worse for the fact that I knew it was a delusion that was making me so happy. I'd been so afraid of touching her, afraid that what had happened in Tokyo might happen again, and now, after weeping in my arms, she seemed closer to me than ever.

That night we slept with our futons pushed together like a married couple. She said she slept better if she could feel me beside her.

I couldn't sleep at all.

In the half-light of the room, I heard her murmur, her eyes fretful beneath their lids. What was she seeing? Her hand reached out for mine, and I let her take it.

She soon fell back into a more tranquil sleep.

I knew why she needed me. I was more than just a friend, but not in the way I wanted. With her mother and father an ocean away, I was everything she had. I was her family.

The thought terrified me more than any imaginary Hell ever could.

-

The next morning Merry came rushing into the bathroom while I was brushing my teeth. I'd left her still sleeping on her futon and I almost choked in surprise.

"Renko, Renko!" Inside a halo of disheveled bed-hair, her face was shining with excitement. "I had a dream!"

I spat out some toothpaste. "A dream or a dream?"

"A dream," she said.

She explained it to me, tumbling over her words in her eagerness. The gargantuan mythic figures she'd seen, an ocean, a great dripping spear. She showed me the object that had led here there in the first place. It was a strange thing, a bit like a key, a bit like a fishhook. It was clearly man-made.

"It's a fragment of the Izanagi Plate," she explained.

I don't k now if I was all that impressed by her latest souvenir, but I was certainly impressed by the vividness of her dream. I took a hold of it.

"I don't see anything," I said.

"Let me help," said Merry.

She held her hands over my eyes, like you do when you sneak up behind someone and challenge them to guess who you are. My mind was immediately flooded with images, strange, mythic images of a limitless sea, of robed figures, huge, frightening, hovering above it.

I saw what must have been the birth of Japan. The great roiling of the ocean, the mighty dripping spear of Izanagi -no-Mikoto. And a place. A dark mountain, the spear driven deep down into its body.

I took hold of her wrists and pulled her hands from my eyes. She was staring at me, her expression one of concern tinged with guilt.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I should have warned you."

"Merry," I said quickly, hoping my growing excitement would help smooth things over. "I've seen this place before. It's a mountain in Takachiho. That spear is called the Ame-no-Sakahoko. It's supposed to be the one that Izanagi-no-Mikoto used to create Japan."

"So I was wrong." She rested an arm against the cool tiling bathroom wall. The relief on her face was palpable. "It wasn't Hell I saw. It was a place of the Gods, a vision from prehistory. The cave of Yomotsuhirasaka, the entrance to Yomi."

"Merry, you're... you're seeing things from the past now as well?"

She nodded.

So Merry hadn't been mistaken when she'd said her powers were becoming stronger. If she could see the past, what else was she capable of? Seeing the future? Were there any limits to her powers at all?

As we packed up our belongings for the trip back to Kyoto, I kept stealing glances at her. She was still my Maribel, the girl with the sweet tooth and the stuffed Okapi and the habit of sticking her tongue out, but beneath it all... in that dream world of hers... was she something else entirely?

I'd started to wonder if Merry was really all that different from the youkai we spent so much time avoiding on our adventures. The thought frightened me a little.

A lot, actually.

And for all my fear, I felt guilty as well.

On the trip back we cheerfully planned our future visit to Togakure to search for the remaining Izanagi Objects that we knew were scattered here and there. The Sealing Club was finally back in business. But Kyoto, and our studies beckoned.

The secret history of Japan would have to wait. 


	3. Chapter 3

Kyoto was glowing in the yellow-gold of midday when we returned. It felt like a good omen. Merry was asleep again. No wonder the girl had all those strange powers: she spent so much of her time in a dream anyway. I let her rest her head on my shoulder and slipped into a half-doze myself. Her hand fell slack onto my thigh and stayed there. With every shift of the train it slid back and forth, almost as if she was caressing me.

By the time we arrived at Kyoto station I was squirming from frustration.

The train came to a stop. Merry woke up and with an apologetic smile took her hand away. "Are you okay, Renko? You seem awfully flushed."

All I could do was nod.

Neither of us were in the mood to rush straight back to the University so we went to Kiyomizudera instead. It was my idea. Partly I didn't want our impromptu holiday to end, but it was also because Zenkouji had been so austere with all its connections to Hell and suffering, and I thought it would be good for Merry to go somewhere a bit more cheerful. Normal girls would have gone to an amusement park, but for the Sealing Club Kiyomizudera was the perfect choice. It's a popular temple complex not far from central Kyoto, and kind of light-hearted with its myriad of tourist attractions. There was also a wonderful view of the city from the famous balcony there. I hadn't had a chance to visit since coming to Kyoto, and Merry, like most locals, hadn't been to it since she was a high school student.

"Did you try walking between the Love Stones?" I asked her as we walked through the main gate of the temple complex. I was referring to a famous set of stones set in the ground about six feet apart outside Jishu Shrine. The tradition was that if you could walk from one to the other with your eyes closed you'd end up with the partner of your heart's desire.

Merry blushed. "No."

I knew again that she was lying and smiled to myself, delighting in the secret. And yet I also felt a twinge of jealousy as I wondered about the person she'd been thinking of when she made the walk.

Had it been a boy or girl? Someone older or younger? They must have been beautiful and smart, I decided. That was definitely Merry's type.

The thought made me a little sad.

And yet I couldn't shake the cute picture of a teenaged Merry in her school uniform, her eyes squeezed closed, stepping nervously between the stones as all her friends shouted encouragement.

The image did nothing for my frustration.

The first thing we did was to go and buy some omomori. Merry bought one for protection from evil influences. I chose one for safety while travelling, since we'd been doing a lot of that lately and a little extra protection couldn't hurt. I'd never really believed in talismans, but after my vision at the onsen I'd begun to suspect that the Shinto gods were real: not in a supernatural sense, but rather that they were powerful extra-dimensional beings who had been involved in the creation of our own world.

It was a theory that warranted more investigation and Merry agreed with me. But even though she'd learned that those visions had been of the prehistoric underworld of Shinto rather than the ethical Hell of Buddhism, they still made her nervous. My reaction at my own vision had probably made things worse, I realised. I was still cursing myself for pulling her hands away so violently.

We took our time looking around the temple complex. There were couples everywhere, walking hand in hand. It was a real mecca for them. I knew I'd subconsciously brought us here as part of my little delusional fantasy, but in that glorious sunshine I didn't care. Did it matter if it was all a lie if it made me happy?

There was another reason I'd wanted to come to Kiyomizudera, but I couldn't do it with Merry around, so I made an excuse to go to the bathroom and ducked back to the place where we'd bought our omomori earlier.

The miko at the window was the one who'd served us. She was surprised to see me again. I guess people usually just buy whatever they want in one go.

"So which other one would you like this time?" she asked.

I was so embarrassed that I just pointed to the little red one with the character AI on it. A charm for luck in love.

I felt like such a little kid. But I was also gripped with anxiety that Merry might see me, so I quickly handed over my money and hid the charm in my skirt pocket, pushing it as far inside as I could. As I walked back to the main temple I could feel it pressing against my thigh. I traced it with delighted but guilty fingers.

I'd left Merry near the famous balcony of the main temple. The view of Kyoto really was amazing from here, the city rising up from behind the little pine forest that grew on the slope of the hill the temple had been built on.

I found her leaning up against the railing waiting for me. She was crying. When she noticed me approaching she turned away and rifled through her handbag until she found her handkerchief.

As she dabbed at her eyes I asked her what was wrong.

"I don't feel well," she said. "Do you remember that time on the shinkansen when we were passing under Mount Fuji? It feels just like that."

I realised then what an idiot I'd been. The balcony of the temple was, like Mount Fuji, a place of death. In the Edo period, many desperate people had jumped from it, not as intentional suicides, but because there was a tradition that if you survived the fall your heart's desire would be fulfilled.

"Let's go somewhere else," I said, taking her hand.

I had it in mind to get our photos taken with the statue of Okuninushi and his messenger-rabbit, but on the way to Jishu shrine we passed by the stones we'd talked about earlier.

Merry stopped me. "Hey Renko, do you want to give it a try?"

I shook my head. "It's just a silly superstition, isn't it?" I said it but didn't really mean it. I had to say something. All this talk of heart's desire had made me feel pretty fragile.

Merry seemed disappointed, both by my refusal to do it and how I'd said it. But it was largely forgotten when we reached the shrine proper and waited our turn to take a photograph. Okuninushi's little friend was as adorable as I'd expected: a rabbit standing on his hind legs and wielding the gohei of a Shinto priest. I was reminded of the lunar rabbits that had almost caught us on our adventure to the moon. He was a lot less scary than those guys had been.

"Do you know the story?" Merry asked me while we waited.

I shook my head. Like I said, Merry is the expert in Japanese folktales.

"Well," she said, "Okuninushi was travelling with some other gods when they came upon a rabbit moaning in pain. He'd been flayed alive because of a trick he'd pulled."

"Ouch," I said. "Wait, this story has a happy ending, right?"

Merry said nothing and just smiled. "The rabbit begged the gods for help, so they suggested that he bathe in the sea. Of course, the salt water just increased his agony. But Okuninushi, moved by kindness, took pity on the rabbit and told him to go roll himself on a pile of cattails. He did as the god said and was healed."

"Phew," I said. "And so ever since, rabbits have been fluffy all over."

"Yes," said Merry. "And the rabbit became Okuninushi's follower, carrying messages between lovers and making sure they reach their proper destination."

"Does every animal have a story like this?"

Merry nodded. "I think so."

"How about the okapi? How did he get his stripy legs and butt?"

Merry's smile was enigmatic. "Well, it is a secret, but do you want to hear it anyway?"

"Sure." I was intrigued by the suddenly mischievous look on her face.

"Well," she said. "The okapi might look innocent, but in fact he's a very lecherous creature. He caused a lot of trouble until the gods finally got sick of it and whipped his butt and legs. The marks of the whipping are the reason for his stripes."

I shook my head, laughing. "What sort of crimes, exactly?"

Merry blushed. "Unspeakable ones."

We stopped at a little tea house on the grounds of the temple for lunch. It wasn't really lunch - I don't think you can call anmitsu lunch, exactly, since it's just jelly and fruit and red bean paste and syrup - but it was perfect for two hungry girls. We had matcha as well, the bitterness matching it perfectly.

I made the obvious stupid pun and Merry laughed. She always laughed at my jokes, no matter how dumb they were.

"I guess we should go," I said, wishing the delusion could continue indefinitely.

As I was about to stand up, Merry's hand fell on mine. I saw embarrassment and the ghost of fear in her wide violet eyes.

"Renko, would you stay with me tonight?"

The thought of spending the night with her both thrilled and terrified me. There was no way I could refuse her.

That night after dinner, in the deep little bath in her apartment, I lay and stared at the steam rising up to the ceiling and remembered the mist that had filled Zenkouji. I wondered if Hell looked a bit like that. Was I going to end up there? It seemed pretty unlikely. I've never committed any major crimes I'm aware of. No murders or theft. Illegal downloading doesn't really count as theft, does it?

Why had Merry thought she was going to end up in Hell?

If there was a real Hell and she went there, I think I'd want to join her. I wouldn't mind it so much if she was with me. I guess you'd get used to it, like you get used to a hot bath.

An eternity with her.

I idly opened some of the face washes and shampoos. It's fun to do that when you're at someone else's place. There was one which was vanilla-scented. It was synthetic, of course, and only vaguely reminded me of Merry's fragrance, but I was suddenly gripped by a terrible pressure. I tried to distract myself by reciting string formulae over and over again in my head, but it was no use. One hand slid down between my legs, the other onto my chest. I felt the sting of guilt as I gave myself over to pleasure in the hot steaming water of the bath.

Merry. My best friend. I wondered what it would be like to make love to her. Was the real Merry as aggressive as the one I'd met in my dream? Would she be the one to take control of everything, push me down onto the bed, strip my clothes off me? There was no way she wasn't experienced. I bet she'd know exactly what to do. I'd let her do whatever she wanted. I just hoped I'd be able to make her feel good as well. Making love was instinctive, right? Even between two girls? It must be.

I was almost there when a polite knock sounded on the door, followed by a voice. "Renko, are you asleep in there?"

In her defence, I'd done that before, like a drunken salary man. It was a legitimate concerned. Every year several people die from drowning that way in Japan.

My hand flew from between my legs and I leaped out of the bath and into the towel I'd left on the washing machine.

Merry was standing just outside the door dressed in her bathrobe. Clutching the messy bundle of my clothes and underwear in my hands, I slipped past her, blushing, and fled to the bedroom where my pyjamas were waiting.

After she finished her shower we sat and watched TV on her sofa. Merry brought out the mandarins we'd picked up at a Fresco on the way back from the temple and she sat there peeling them and dividing up the segments. The graceful movement of her fingers intrigued me far more than whatever was on TV.

When she was done she leaned across and offered a segment to me. "Say 'ah'!"

I stared at her. I opened my mouth but there was no way I was going to say 'ah'.

She slipped a segment of mandarin into my mouth. I crushed it between my teeth, feeling the juice spill out, honey sweet. I imagined I could taste the ghost of her fingers on it.

Merry, full of mandarin, soon became sleepy, as she often does after eating. She rested her head on my shoulder but when she started to slip down I scooshed across the sofa and gently lowered her head onto my lap. She murmured but didn't wake up.

I lay there, watching the TV and seeing very little of it. Merry's hair was falling into her eyes so I brushed it back over her ears. Then I just left my hand there, stroking her hair. The show on TV was that panel one where the celebrities are attached to brain-scanners that display their emotions based on the videos they're shown, things like talking cats and people escaping from various dangerous predicaments.

I was just glad there wasn't anything like that around to show what I was feeling right now.

Eventually I got bored of watching manzai comedians and washed-up gravure actresses trying to crack jokes about everything, so I switched off the TV. My eyes had started to close as well. I decided we should probably go to sleep. Merry was groggy as I helped her into her bedroom.

Her stuffed okapi was sitting at the end of the bed. I offered him to her, but she shook her head.

"Put him on the chair," she murmured. "There's not enough space."

I was blushing hot as I placed the little guy in his place of exile and made him comfortable.

"Sorry," I whispered.

I switched off the lights and slipped into bed next to Merry. Her arms slid around my neck, her lips brushing my cheek.

"Thank you, Renko."

"That's okay," I said, not really knowing what she was talking about. I guess she was already half-asleep.

"For everything," she said, answering the question I hadn't asked.

It was sometime in the middle of the night and I was dreaming. It was a strange dream, filled with bizarre imagery and powerfully erotic. I was walking in a warm, steam-filled jungle amid tall trees. Their trunks were smooth and unblemished, the bark tinged pink in the light of the red moon hanging in the sky. They were also outrageously voluptuous in shape, gracefully curved and hollowed, with slender branches and roots. I stopped to look at one more closely. I couldn't resist reaching out and running my hands across its trunk, the bark soft and giving to the touch. Somehow my fingers slipped underneath it, encountering a warm and giving smoothness. The tree seemed to move into me and I slid my arms around it, embracing it. It pulled me closer, and for a moment it felt as though I was being drawn into the tree itself. There was a scent of mint and of vanilla and of the warm wetness of a rainforest.

I heard a moan.

I began to wake from the dream. The mistiness fled, the lunar redness replaced by the gentle silver of true moonlight. The scent of mint was rich on the heavy breath that was caressing my skin. It was coming from a beautiful face, its eyes closed, the curl of heavy black lashes lying upon the curve of porcelain cheekbones. Lips gently parted, the scent now mint, now vanilla.

It was no longer a tree I was embracing, but Merry.

I panicked, but a panic wholly centred in my mind. My body, somehow, remained motionless. When my heart's beating had slowed enough, I began to slide my arms from around her, painfully slowly, as if I was afraid her skin would burn me. The heat of her body, mere centimetres from my own skin, was a curvaceous ghost of warmth. She was still asleep, right? There's no way she could have noticed what I'd been...

My fingertips grazed her ribs under her nightdress. The lips near mine opened and a soft gasp escaped from them. I tasted vanilla again in her warm breath.

Somehow I managed to slide my hands out from under her nightdress without touching her again.

I turned over. For a while Merry didn't move and I decided she must be asleep. I squeezed my own eyes shut and had begun to drift back off to sleep when I heard the whisper of her hair sliding across her pillow as she turned over as well.

Merry's hands encircled my waist and I stiffened. She was still asleep, wasn't she? Sometimes I'd wake up with her arms around me, especially on nights when it was cold. Wasn't this just...?

Then her hands moved again, slipping up under my pyjama top. One slid onto my stomach, the other moving higher, fingertips fluttering over my ribs. My mind reeled at the excruciating combination of ticklishness and erotic tension.

She moved closer. Where the back of my pyjama top had ridden up I felt her nightdress slither over my bare skin, the soft pressure of her breasts press against my back. This time I gasped.

Her breath fluttered against the back of my neck. She was breathing heavily. She nestled against me, her hair falling across my ear and temple. I sensed her lips, hot and moist, hovering. Hesitating, but only for a moment, before pressing down against my skin.

It was electric. The delicious sensation, the softness of her lips, the moistness of her breath, the heat of her still-hidden tongue, ran skittering along the top of my spine. I felt a jolt of pleasurable pressure between my legs and bit my lip.

It had become impossible to act like I was still asleep.

Her hand rose higher, slipping over one of my breasts. She cupped it, squeezed gently, my nipple hardening against her palm. I exhaled explosively. I hadn't realised I'd been holding my breath the whole time. Merry's lips slipped down, following the curve of my neck and onto my shoulder. I felt her lips part, her mouth biting down with the gentlest of pressure from her teeth.

The hand on my stomach fell onto my hip and she eased the elastic waistband of my pyjamas down.

By this point I was soaking wet. It was so bad I could smell my own excitement. With a mammoth effort of will I reached back and took hold of Merry's hand. It froze. But I had no intention of stopping what was happening. I rolled over, my eyes still closed, her hand still grasped in mine. The scent of her breath intensified, her lips now less than an inch from my own. Our hands nestled between our two bodies, I guided hers back down to where it had been and moved my own across to her hip. Her nightdress had gotten bunched up around her middle and I immediately encountered skin and the textured material of her panties. Resting my palm against the curve of her lower stomach, I slipped my fingers under the waistband.

I had never done this with another girl before, but I knew what I liked and it wasn't long before I learned what Merry liked as well. Her lips brushing up against mine, our panting breath mixing, we melted together, neither saying a word, focussed on the painful, pleasurable dancing of each other's fingers.

I wanted it to last forever, but I was barely any time at all before I felt myself approaching that delicious spot I'd been disturbed from reaching all those hours ago. I was trembling, sick with need, an intensity I'd never felt when doing it by myself. Merry's scent, the darkness, the heaviness of her breathing, drove me forward. I gasped, almost there, but pulled myself away from the brink somehow.

I wanted to reach that place together with her.

I didn't have to worry. My panting seemed to excite her and she was soon emitting sharp little cries like an animal in pain. It was so adorable that I knew I couldn't hold out much longer. That tell-tale pressure had gripped me, almost unbearable, like when the ocean pulls away from a beach, its surging waters building up until a wave finally curls and breaks.

Merry's lips burrowed against my neck and I felt the sudden sharp sting of her teeth. Pleasure flooded over me then, all at once, and I cried out, trembling with an intensity of joy that drove every rational thought from my head. A heartbeat later Merry shuddered as well, the fingers of her free hand entwining in my hair as she clung to me.

After a long while we separated, collapsing onto our backs. Merry's hand found mine and we lay there, exhausted. I forgot my name, who I was, everything except that moment itself: the pleasure we had shared ebbing away, the fragrance and the sweat-slick heat of the one I loved lying beside me, her hand in my own.

I was an eternity before names meant anything to me again. It was another eternity before I found my voice.

"Merry?" I murmured.

There was no response. I turned my head and, with a courage I didn't realise I had, opened my eyes.

Merry wasn't moving. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted, and I heard the tell-tale heaviness of breath of someone fast asleep.

Sleep stole down on me as well, almost like a living thing, pressing on top of me. I fell back, closed my own eyes, and saw and thought nothing more.

When I woke the next morning I was alone in her bed. The okapi stared at me with sad eyes from the chair. I lay there, staring back, while the person who was Usami Renko struggled to remember who she was. At last I lifted my fingers to the tender spot on my neck and I began to grin. I leaped out from under the covers then immediately leaped back under them. I lay face down on her side of the bed, burying my face in her pillow. I wanted to laugh, cry, shout out, something, but my usual reticence stopped me. Instead I just splayed out my arms and feet, embracing the bed like a starfish, breathing in the gloriousness of her scent, all the while kicking my legs up and down.

I heard the clutter of cups in the apartment and got out of bed. I bopped the okapi on his nose as I passed him.

"Sorry, pal."

Merry's bathroom is right across from her bedroom. The door was open and there were shreds of steam still lurking inside. She must have taken a morning shower, unusual for her. But then I smelled myself and I realised I probably needed a shower as well. The scent was not just of me, though. It was of us. Mixed together, it drew me right back to our lovemaking during the night. I felt my cheeks grow hot and decided that a shower was probably a good idea.

Merry had her back to me as I entered the apartment's LDK still drying my hair.

"Renko?" Her voice floated over to me as if from far away. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Yes please," I said. I sat down at her little breakfast nook while Merry busied herself with the making of the coffee. She was already dressed and I felt a bit funny being still in my pyjamas. I was also excited. The warm nakedness of my body under the flannelette was distracting.

Even after the shower I could still smell her on me.

She was taking an awfully long time with the coffee. I got up and slipped my hands around her waist from behind. I hadn't seen her face since last night and I wanted to see it. I wanted to see her, and kiss her. Despite all we'd done last night, we hadn't even kissed yet. I wanted to rectify that as soon as I could.

Merry stiffened. She half-turned and smiled at me over her shoulder. "Sorry I'm taking so long. I'll just be a little longer."

I stepped back. I was being pushy, I realised.

Leaning back against the counter I watched her spoon coffee into the portafilter and tamp it down.

The silence was making me feel weird, so I said, "Merry. I... I just wanted to tell you I really enjoyed..." Embarrassment gripped me and I stumbled over my words. "Uh, last night."

She stopped tamping. "Oh?"

"Yeah," I replied. "It was... uh, it was incredible." Talking about this sort of thing was difficult, I realised. I was blushing hard.

Merry pressed the button on the coffee machine and turned towards me. A bright smile burst onto her face.

"Oh. Did you have a lovely dream?"

For a moment I just stared at her. Then a smile crept onto my face. She was joking, of course. Merry, that joker!

"Uh yeah, a dream."

Merry, still smiling, turned and went over to the fridge to get the milk out. As she gripped the handle I caught sight of her face suddenly reflected on the surface of the silver-coated door. All at once the smile slid away from it, like a guilty thing, replaced by an expression I'll never forget. I'll never forget it, but it's nearly impossible to describe what it was like. It was a mixture of things: embarrassment, pain, regret.

I guess the word horror sums it up well enough.

I only saw it for a split second. Then the door opened and the reflected face slid away and disappeared.

I don't think it registered right away. I leaned back against the counter. I've heard of people being stabbed during a mugging and walking home only to bleed to death in their beds, so shocked at the attack that they were unable to believe it had happened. It felt like that, I guess.

Merry turned to pour the milk into a jug and glanced at me. Despite the nervousness of the movement, there was a sweet smile on her face now. It was even worse, in a way, than the expression I'd seen reflected in the door of the fridge. It was like her usual smile, that smile that had always delighted me, but it was paper-thin now, a pretence, a mask.

I knew the truth, then, of what she'd said. Last night had been a dream. A lovely dream, but just a dream.

We would never be together.

As she turned back to foam the milk I slipped away into the bedroom. I wrestled myself into my clothes and walked back out through the living room to the genkan, where I scooped up my shoes, threw open the front door and stepped outside, barefoot.

"Renko?"

I didn't stop. I burst into a run. I sprinted down the corridor, paused at the doors to the elevator and then, thinking better of it, threw open the fire-escape. I heard another "Renko!", louder this time, as I jumped down the stairs two at a time.

I was streets away before I realised I still hadn't put my shoes on. My feet were filthy, but I put them on anyway. Every bit of me felt filthy, as filthy and numb as my feet were. I ran my hand through my hair. It was still wet.

My hat. I'd forgotten my hat.

The rest of that day was a nightmare, even worse than those days when Merry had been sick. I wandered the streets, occasionally stopping to stare at things dumbly: a video arcade, a bookshop, a playground with children playing in it. Cafés made me want to cry so I hurried past them, my eyes glued to the ground. When I finally noticed my feet were aching, I caught a train and let it take me back and forth through Kyoto. Stations passed me that I'd never seen before. Had I chosen a train to Osaka, or was..? Wait, no. There were those same stations I'd seen earlier.

Kyoto's skyline, as it slid past the windows across the aisle from me, was the thing that finally made me burst into tears. There were only a few other people in the carriage and they politely ignored me, staring at their books or at each other or out the window. I was left in a void all by myself, tears burning a path down both my cheeks.

It suited me fine. The world around me was just like those other worlds Merry had taken me to. It was there and I could see it, but it seemed unreal, wavering, an illusion. Maybe even a delusion.

I'd deluded myself. Like a fool I'd made the same mistake again, worse this time. What I'd done to Merry last night was not in the same league as holding her hand.

But she had caressed me as well. I remembered the gentle but eager touch of her fingers, the heat of her breath. Had she done it in her sleep? Had it been an involuntary thing? I'd heard of people making love to their partners while still asleep. I guess it happened to others, too... people who weren't partners.

Fingers traced the mark her teeth had left on my neck. Fresh tears spilled from my eyes. I was amazed at how much moisture there was in the human body. Where was it all coming from?

The look on her face. Horror. At me, at what she'd done with me. The look of someone who'd seen a monster. Or glimpsed Hell. I couldn't shake it.

I sat on the train, lost in a labyrinth of agony. The thoughts became a jumble, transmuted to a strange, undefined pain, as though it was a physical ache and not an emotional one.

I put my hand in my pocket. My phone wasn't there. It was still at Merry's apartment.

But there was something there. I took it out.

The love charm from Kiyomizudera,

I rested my chin on my chest. There were no more tears. I don't think there was enough moisture left in my body for them. There was only pain. It flowed over me in waves.

An eternity later I heard the station I'd been waiting for without realising it: Kiyomizu-Gojo. I wiped my face with my shawl and stumbled out of the train, out of the station into the streets.

They were quiet. The sky seemed strangely dark. A storm?

No, it was just late. I'd spent the whole day in my suffering and hadn't noticed the passing of time.

I started climbing the hill to the temple. It was the only place I could go. At the entrance I encountered a group of giggling maiko who were on their way out. It added to the unreality of the situation.

People were already leaving. The temple shut at six thirty usually. I slipped inside, trying to avoid the priests and the miko who were about to go home and slunk my way through the main temple complex.

"Uh... I forgot my phone," I murmured to a priest about to ask me something. My voice sounded strangled, dry, weird. There was no way I couldn't have been lying. He let me go, though. I felt his eyes burning into my back as I hurried away.

I slipped from pillar to pillar of the main temple until I reached the balcony. Everyone was gone now. I looked out at the skyline of Kyoto in the setting sun. It was burnished bronze, and I was back again with Merry on the maglev, returning home from Shinshuu.

The tears began again.

From behind my pillar I watched the colour and brightness go out of the world, felt it mirrored in myself.

Such a fool, such a fool.

I clutched the charm in my hand.

Darkness settled. There was no one walking around anymore. I felt it was safe to come out of hiding.

I stepped up to the railing. The lights had begun to flicker on across Kyoto, and it took on a fairyland strangeness. It suddenly looked no different than any of the strange lights and landscapes of Merry's Gensoukyou.

It was her place, wasn't it? Her beautiful, dangerous dreamland. I'd been a guest, for a little while. I'd been Merry's friend, for a little while; her lover, for a few moments. For just a few moments I'd had my dearest wish. And I hadn't even had to jump from this balcony and risk my life to get it. But losing it had...

The horror on her face.

I took the charm in my hand, wound the little string thong around a finger. I took off my shoes. It was easier with my feet bare, but it still took a lot of effort to pull myself up onto the railing. Somehow I managed it. I stood there, looking across over the embankment. There was some work going on down there - temples are always being renovated. Such ancient, immortal things, but endlessly being renewed, dying and being reborn. I raised my hand. I'd planned to toss the charm out across the empty expanse, to take my feelings for Merry with it. So foolishly romantic. But I lowered my hand again.

I looked below me. So this was the view that so many people had seen the moment before they threw themselves off: pine trees and shaded darkness. For some it was one of the last things they saw. I wondered how long it would take to reach the bottom. It had to hurt, right, when you hit the ground? Probably just for a second, though. Probably just for a second. Just for a second...


	4. Chapter 4

I heard footsteps from behind me. Startled, I turned and looked for whoever was making them.

They were getting closer.

A glimpse of golden hair from between the pillars. A flutter of a purple dress.

It couldn't be... How could she know that I...?

But it wasn't her.

The figure that stepped around the pillar closest to me was a woman, tall and blonde just like Merry, but there the immediate similarity ended. Her gold-and-purple embroidered dress billowed out about her feet as she walked. She was swinging a parasol, which struck me as highly eccentric since there was no sign of rain and it was already dark.

Somehow, seeing someone of such a striking and unusual appearance shocked me far more than if I'd seen a ghost. I stood there on the railing, unable to do anything other than stare as she approached.

Her face, when it came close enough in the dying light for me to make out, was beautiful. Her features were delicate, like a doll's, but her eyes! Her eyes were violet, a colour I had only ever seen in Merry, but a deeper violet, like the colour the sky often turns just before night falls.

And she was smiling.

"Well, well!" the woman said, her voice ringing with cheerful good humour. "Isn't it a little too late to be practising tightrope-walking? And in such a dangerous place, too."

I felt suddenly ridiculous. Flushing in embarrassment, I carefully slid down onto my bottom. The woman offered me her hand and I hopped back down onto the wooden floor of the balcony.

"I... I wasn't going to... I didn't want to..."

"Of course not," she said, her smile widening. Every tooth was perfect, white as pearl. Her canines were pronounced. There was something of the shark about that smile.

I felt a sudden sting of fear. I gave a stiff bow and was about to make my escape when the woman gently placed her umbrella in front of me, point down on the floor.

"Please, there's no need to rush away. I'm sorry for disturbing your reverie." She went and leaned against the railing. "No doubt you came here to appreciate the view. Kyoto is indeed an incredibly beautiful city, isn't it? Even the bombing during the War couldn't dent its charm."

I was still afraid, but politeness won out. After showing me such kindness, it would be wrong for me to just run away from her. I joined her, somewhat awkwardly, at the railing.

She was right. Kyoto _was_ beautiful. I hadn't noticed it when I'd been standing on the railing. With the fall of night, the glass and steel of the skyscrapers had transmuted into effigies of living light.

I started to cry.

The woman, saying nothing, put her hand on my shoulder. It immediately calmed me, which was strange since, like I said before, I've never really liked being touched. I looked down at her hand. It was small and exquisite, the sleeve it came out of gloriously embroidered in gold and purple. I wondered who this woman was. She had something of the priestess about her. Or the goddess.

"Who are you?" I whispered.

"A stranger, but one with a friendly ear," she said. "You know, I find most problems just need to be spoken aloud to another to put them into perspective. If they're left to lurk in one's heart alone, they can become quite toxic." She turned back to Kyoto. "I know that all too well, myself."

I looked about us. "I think maybe we should go. The priest said..."

"Oh, we won't be disturbed," said the woman. "Please. What is it that is making such a charming young woman as yourself cry?" Her violet eyes glimmered with teasing humour. "But of course it can't be anything other than love, surely. Love lost, love unrequited?"

I looked down at the railing, ashamed. I nodded. Somehow, I trusted this strange woman. I suppose her being a stranger did make things easier.

"I'm in love with my best friend," I said. "But she doesn't love me."

The woman sighed. "Ah. Is that it?" She tapped her umbrella against the wood, as if composing her thoughts. "If it makes you feel better, I too have experienced this same situation. Twice in my life, in fact."

I blinked at her. "Twice?"

Her eyes glazed. They suddenly seemed far more than human. "If one lives long enough, all of human experience begins to repeat itself."

"But you can't be older than..." My voice dropped away. Was I really going to try and guess this woman's age? She looked to be in her early thirties, but the perfection of her skin...

Best just let it drop.

She seemed delighted by my abortive compliment. "Kindness is such a delightful virtue," she said. "And an increasingly rare one. She's lucky to have such a good friend."

How could I explain? Explain everything that had happened?

"No," I said at last. "I'm not a good friend. It's just... I had a dream, I guess. A dream that we were something more than just friends. But it was just that. A dream."

The woman sighed. "Personally, I don't believe in dreams. I never have. Do you know why?"

I shook my head.

"Because ultimately there's no difference between dream and reality. It's just a matter of perspective."

"So it's all subjective?" I laughed. "She said almost the exact same thing to me once."

The woman's smile was enigmatic. "What did you say in response?"

"That there _must_ be such a thing as objective reality. I mean, if I were to die, then this world would continue to exist, wouldn't it?"

The woman's smile grew stranger still. "Perhaps. But then again, maybe such a thing is not true of everyone." She stepped towards me, brought her face close to mine, so close that I felt her breath against my skin. She smelled of perfume, a subtle but intensely sexy fragrance. "It's all a matter of barriers, after all. Ultimately, the way science strives to carve up the universe in order to define it is purely subjective, is it not? The problem comes when one finds that there is no end to the divisions one can make. You can't carve things up indefinitely."

"It's funny," I said. "I once told her that it was impossible to break down the universe into its smallest particle and observe it, since the energy we'd need would be more than could be generated within our own universe."

"Humanity," said the woman with a sigh half-indulgent, half-pitying. "Wanting to cut everything into little pieces when all one has to do is stand back and appreciate it as a whole."

We stood there in silence. It wasn't at all awkward. We just watched as the final glow of day died over Kyoto. The moon, almost a full one, had already risen, and now its own light began to shine.

"I wonder where she is," I said suddenly. Despite everything that had happened, I missed her.

"You know," said the woman with the violet eyes. "Often things that seem far away are in fact very close indeed. The distances - the gaps - between them are often illusionary, purely subjective. Take the moon."

I looked at it. I remembered what the real moon had been like. The beautiful silver and gold of the dunes beneath my feet, the sky black as volcanic glass, the pure sea, the forests of glittering crystal.

"It seems so far away, does it not? And yet an unbreakable bond binds it to this earth. Can you see the rabbit pounding mochi?"

I nodded. Of course I could. Every child is taught where it is: its long ears, the big kneading-mortar at its feet.

"A pattern caused by meteoric impacts," continued the woman. "And yet so strangely arranged by chance into the shape of a rabbit. Foreigners like your friend, of course, see a man in the moon rather than a rabbit."

I nodded again. Merry had told me that. I'd never really been able to see the man, though.

"Did you know that without the moon by its side, this world would be regularly devastated by the impact of the meteors it stops? Once, long ago, just such an impact tore the moon away from the earth. It could have gone spinning out into the universe on its own, but it didn't. Do you know what kept it here?"

"Gravity?"

The woman chuckled. "Gravity is just another word for love. It's love that keeps the moon and the earth from ever being truly apart. She stays at the earth's side, always ready to protect her, because she loves her."

I burst out laughing. It wasn't a cynical laugh, as might have been expected from me. It was a strangely free laugh, as if somehow I'd glimpsed a little of the joy I'd once had. Love. Love rather than gravity keeping the earth and moon together! It was such a charming image. The sort of thing Merry would come up with.

My laugh didn't seem to have offended the woman in the slightest. "Now look below us," she said, pointing over the railing, her long sleeve hanging down over the black void. "It looks far to the bottom, doesn't it? And yet, if one were foolish enough to throw themselves off this railing, they would find the distance very short indeed. They would have just enough time to pray and plead for the ground to move farther away, to give them a few extra instants of the life they'd so foolishly thrown away."

I felt suddenly sick, maybe as sick as Merry had when we had come here. To have fallen off here, to have lost everything. That moon there, in the sky; the stars, the city, the night. Merry. Everything.

I turned to say something to her, to thank her for her kindness, perhaps. I'll never know for sure, since she was already gone.

I hadn't heard her go.

But then I heard her voice. It seemed to come from all directions at once.

"Stop trying to divide up the universe, Usami Renko," it said. "The only barriers that exist are the ones in your mind."

A ghost. Or a goddess. Or something else. I hurried away, suddenly fearful. The night held full reign now and I no desire to meet that strange, beautiful violet-eyed spectre again.

I slipped out of the temple. The gate was wide open. I saw no one. The only light now was from a few scattered street lights and the moon. I looked up at it.

I thought I could see its face smiling at me.

As I walked through the moon-glazed streets, each step made me breathe more freely. I felt my heart lighten. There was still sadness, but it was not that black sorrow that had so infected me. Being alone was no longer so horrifying. It was as if the light of the moon had purified me, as if the violet-eyed woman's words had banished my despair.

The streets grew misty. The moon's face was obscured. It became hard to tell which direction I was walking in. I followed the slope down. Kiyomizudera was at the top of a hill and central Kyoto had to be somewhere below me. I could no longer see the stars, but I knew I had to come upon the river and Kiyomizu-Gojo station soon.

I felt something in my pocket. The charm. I still had it. I turned to throw it into the darkness, but I put it back in my pocket instead. Throwing it away seemed a childish thing to do, and somehow wrong as well.

Eternity. An eternity walking along those formless, silver streets. Then I heard footsteps from somewhere ahead of me, from further down the slope.

I stopped, feeling the sudden cold grip of fear. Was it _her_?

A flash of golden hair. A purple dress.

It wasn't her.

I broke into a run.

It was Merry. She'd seen me and was running too.

We came to a stop a few feet away from each other. Merry was panting, having had to run uphill. She was clutching something to her heaving chest.

My hat.

Seeing the stupid thing made me burst into tears. I blindly stumbled the last few feet. Her arms opened to meet me. She was crying, too, as she hugged me.

"Renko." My name. Just once. Then she was burying her face in my hair. I felt her tears, hot and wet, soak through to my skin.

We stood like that for an eternity. Finally Merry took her arms from around me and placed the hat on my head. She adjusted it, looking at me with a shy smile on her lips.

I said nothing at first. I just stared at her. Her cheeks were wet, her eyes red, tears trapped in her eyelashes like miniature diamonds.

She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

Merry blushed and dropped her gaze. "You... you forgot your hat," she said.

"Thanks," I said. It was an effort to say anything, my throat was so thick with nervousness.

"I brought your phone as well." She dug around in the pocket of her dress for a moment then looked back at me, her face despairing. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I guess I left it at the apartment."

Tears sprung anew from the corners of her eyes and she fell forwards into my arms, sobbing. I held her, feeling the tears start again in my own eyes. Her fragrant hair covered my face. Right then, as painful as it was, I didn't want to be anywhere else.

"I... I looked everywhere for you, Renko," she said through the sobs. "When I couldn't find you, I thought... I was sure that something terrible had happened to you."

"It doesn't matter now, Merry," I murmured, stroking her hair. "I'm okay. Nothing happened. I'm sorry I ran away. It was a childish thing to do."

She hugged me harder. "Oh Renko. Please... please don't apologise. For anything. It's my fault. Everything, everything that happened. I'm just so weak."

"Weak?" I laughed. "Merry, you're the strongest person I know."

She pulled away from me. Her face was a mask of pain. "No, Renko. You don't understand. I'm weak. Selfish. And because of that I've kept hurting you, all this time. If I was strong, I would've been able to do it. Do what I should have done. Stopped you getting so close to me."

I struggled to keep the heartbreak from my face. "You don't need to stay with me, Merry. Just because you feel sorry for me. Just because I..." I dropped my gaze. I couldn't look at her. The last came out as little more than a whisper. "You know how I feel, right?"

She lifted a hand to my face.

"Renko."

I turned away. "I know I must disgust you. I'd be disgusted, too, if someone had acted the way I have towards you. Clinging to you like a lovesick idiot." I shook my head. "After what I did to you last night, you were right... right to look at me that way. Right to be disgusted at me."

"Renko."

I felt her hand touch my arm and I jerked away from it. My eyes burned hot with new tears.

"Renko!" She grabbed my shoulders, twisting me around with some force as I struggled, trying to pull away from her. "Renko, what you saw...that disgust. It wasn't because of you. I was disgusted at _myself_."

"It doesn't matter," I muttered, closing my eyes in a vain attempt to stop the flow of tears. "I've forgotten it now. I know... I know now that we can't ever be together."

"Renko, listen to me. Last night..." Merry's voice grew soft. "Last night. With you. It was the happiest moment of my life."

I looked up at her. Opening my eyes made them sting, but the shock forced me too. Her words had left me reeling. "Merry... what are you saying?"

"Renko," Her hand slipped up onto my cheek. "Renko. You know I love you, right?"

I stared at her. The words had been so soft, I'd barely heard them. No, I'd heard them, but I hadn't believed them. They were too terrifying to believe.

But when I saw the look in her eyes, those beautiful, widely-spaced violet eyes, all at once I believed.

And then my trembling legs finally gave way and I fell to my knees before her. Sobbing, I threw my arms around her waist and buried my face in her dress like a child. She knelt down, cradled my face, wiped the tears away from my cheeks with a delicate sweep of her thumbs.

"Why?" I whispered, my eyes pleading.

Why didn't I just say 'I love you too'? It's the way things are supposed to happen. That's how people usually respond, right? At least, normal people do. But I guess I've never been normal.

It was a 'why' that asked a lot of things. I think Merry realised that too. She looked at me, her eyes glistening with tears. There was pain in her face, but she still managed to smile at me, a faint smile that was achingly sad as well.

"Do I really have to give a reason? You're such a kind and beautiful person, Renko. It's hard not to love you, you know. I've tried."

"Merry, when... when did you...?"

Her eyes grew misty. "I'm not sure, but maybe... that day at the café? The second time we met? I was talking with that boy and you came up to us. You looked so nervous. I just wanted to hug that nervousness out of you." She sighed. "You know, I really liked that boy. At the time I thought something was happening between us."

My heart sank. So I'd been right. "Merry, I'm sorry I got in the way of..."

She shook her head. "I'm not. You know, after that day, after we formed the Sealing Club, I just forgot all about him. I guess it was just too much fun being with you. But it wasn't just that. Whenever you weren't around you were all I thought of. I guess I was falling in love with you even then."

"Merry..."

"But it wasn't until that night... at the yakitori place. Do you remember it?"

I nodded. I even managed to chuckle. "How could I forget? That place had some of the worst sake I've ever tasted."

"The yakitori was worse," said Merry, struggling to smile. "It was the first time I knew for sure I had feelings for you. Otherwise I would never have risked telling you. About my ability. But I had to tell you. I wanted you to know. I wanted you to know the real me. And when you believed me, when you weren't afraid of me, I..." A single tear fell from her eye.

My lip started to tremble. Merry... she'd loved me, since way back then? Since before the Sanatorium, since before Torifune, even before Tokyo? It was cruel, too cruel.

I squeezed my eyes shut, but the tears forced their way out anyway. I cursed my weakness, humiliated by the tears that were blurring my eyes, angry, angry as well.

"Why?" I whispered. "Why didn't you tell me, Merry? That day... in Tokyo. In the movie theatre. Afterwards. Didn't you know how I felt about you then?"

The look on Merry's face was despairing. "Renko. I knew... oh, of course I knew. When you took hold of my hand, I was so happy! I just wanted to turn to you and kiss you and... but I stopped myself. I knew even then that it was wrong. I should never have held your hand. I should have pushed you away. If only I'd been strong enough..."

"Merry, what are you saying?"

"Renko, You can't love me. You mustn't love me. Just forget all about me." She began to weep.

She wasn't making any sense. I held her, let her cry, brushing her hair back from where it threatened to hang over her face while the tears kept flowing.

Despite the pain, I finally found the strength to speak. "Merry, do you think it's easy to just stop loving someone?"

She looked up at me again. "You have to," she whispered. "Because I'm not strong enough to. Because otherwise, one day... Renko, something terrible is going to happen. What happened on Torifune, the chimera - it was a warning. But the next time... the next time, I'm so scared that something will happen to you." She wiped angrily at the tears in her eyes. "When I was the sanatorium, I promised myself that as soon as they let me out I'd do the right thing. I'd run away. Run somewhere you'd never find me. But when I saw you there, in the park... I knew I couldn't leave you. I hated myself for being so weak, but I couldn't go through with it. I needed you too much. Renko, you're the only thing in my life that's ever made me feel _normal_."

"Merry, I'm pretty sure you're overreacting." Guilt surged over me. I'd started to think of Merry as a youkai, hadn't I? Hadn't I been scared of her, of her power, of what she could see? Our sacred bond, my unspoken promise to her since that night at the yakitori place: that I wasn't afraid of her ability. That she could rely on me to be with her, to treat her as a normal person. And I'd betrayed that.

She shook her head. "No, you don't understand. There's so much that I haven't told you about. Things I've seen. The past. The future. My abilities, whatever they are, they're getting stronger. I'm so scared, Renko. Scared of what I'm capable of. Scared of what might happen to you if you stay with me."

"Merry, they're just dreams. Even if they can hurt you, they can't hurt me."

"But one day they _will_!" It was a cry of despair. "You don't understand, Renko. How dangerous my dream-world can be. It's not a place for humans. Just for monsters. Monsters like me."

"Who's talking about being a monster?" I said, with sudden anger. I was angry at myself, mostly. "I wouldn't care, even if you were one. Last night, when we were together. You felt human to me then."

Pain flashed across Merry's face. "Renko, last night. After we made love. I saw you. Afterwards. A dream. But it was so real. I knew it was the future I was seeing. I dreamed... I dreamed you were dead."

From anyone else a statement like that would have made me burst out laughing. But it was Merry, after all. I stared at her, fearful of what she might say.

But I had to know.

"What did you see?"

She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head as if trying to shake the memory from her. "You were lying on the ground, lying on a bed of pine-needles. Everything was lit by moonlight, and you were broken, so tiny and broken, lying there like a puppet that had had its strings cut. I... I lifted you up, and you were so light, almost like you had no weight at all. You were still warm, your body... the blood... it was all still warm."

The horror and conviction in Merry's voice chilled me. But when she started to weep I pushed all thoughts of it away. She needed me. I hugged her close as sobs wracked her body.

"I knew it had to be my fault," she said after she'd grown calmer again. "That it was a warning of what would happen if I let things keep going the way they were. And so I decided to act like nothing had happened between us. I thought, maybe...maybe if I pushed you away, you'd be safe, Renko." She buried her face in my shawl. "God, I've been messing everything up since that time in Tokyo. I wish you'd never met me."

'I don't," I said, kissing the top of her head. "No matter what happens, Merry, being with you has made me the happiest I've ever been."

She stared up at me. Her face suddenly looked so fragile, like it was made from crystal. "Renko? Can you... can you really forgive me?"

I stood up, lifted her to her feet. The anger, the fear, the pain, the despair - here, on this misty street beneath the moon, as I held her in my arms, it all melted away.

To look at everything as a single whole and not try to define it. Hadn't that been what the woman with the violet eyes had said? Whatever had happened between Merry and I, I loved her. However much she'd hurt me, I loved her. This girl in my arms. I loved her, and she said she loved me.

Wasn't that the only thing that mattered?

"Renko?"

I took a breath. Then I said, "There's nothing to forgive, Merry. Everything I've done has been my own choice. My own dream." I laughed. "I guess we've shared a dream in more ways than one, ever since that night at the yakitori place. The dream was real and I didn't even realise it."

She'd pushed me away, not because she'd rejected me, but because she loved me. Like the moon, she'd done it to protect me. But like the earth and the moon, we were stuck together, the two of us, bound together by that fundamental force known to some as gravity, but which I knew was just love under another name.

I slid my hand into hers. She held it tight, so tight I knew she wouldn't let it go this time.

Merry looked up at me, her violet eyes wide. "But aren't you frightened? About the future?"

"Not anymore," I said, squeezing her hand. "Not anymore."

I looked out at the swirling mist that surrounded us. There were no lights now, no houses, nothing but mist and shadow and the spectral light of the moon. Just the two of us, lost in a formless space.

Merry followed my gaze, as if seeing where we were for the first time. "Renko, where are we?"

"I don't know, Merry," I said. "But as long as you're with me, it wouldn't matter if it was Hell itself."

We walked hand in hand through the mist. It had become so thick the light of the moon barely penetrated it. The slope led us ever downwards.

"This is all wrong," I said. "We should be in the centre of Kyoto by now."

Merry clutched my arm. "Do you think I've taken us somewhere? Without noticing?"

I didn't answer. I knew what she was thinking. The slope, taking us ever downwards into mist and darkness. My earlier words began to seem disturbingly prophetic. So I decided to distract her and myself from that train of thought.

"Merry, I didn't tell you, but when I was at the temple I met someone very strange."

"Oh?"

As we walked I told her about my encounter with the woman with the violet eyes. Merry was fascinated by it.

"Do you think maybe it was the goddess? Kannon-sama?"

"I don't know who she was," I replied. One thing I was sure of, though, was that there was no way she could have been the Lady of Mercy. That gently mocking look on her face, the teasing glimmer in her eyes, the predatory gleam of teeth too sharp, a smile too wide. "But goddess, ghost, youkai, witch... whatever she was, she was a friend, I think."

"A strange thing happened to me as well," said Merry. "You said you were at Kiyomizudera, right? I wasn't anywhere near there. I was at the university. I was about to go back to your apartment, thinking you might have been going back there since it was getting dark, and then... and then everything went dark, _really_ dark, I mean, just for a second, and I thought I saw eyes... eyes staring at me from everywhere. Then I found myself on that street and saw you walking towards me out of the mist." She squeezed my arm and buried her face in my shoulder. "I've never been so happy to see someone in all my life."

Above us, the mist began to part. The retreating wisps look especially ghostly. I looked up into the black mirror of the sky as fragments of it appeared. Clusters of stars sparkled there, a scattering of pinpricks like the sky was dusted with crushed diamond. The Milky Way?

"Can you tell where we are?" asked Merry. She'd seen me gazing at the sky intently.

"Nowhere on Earth," I said. "I don't recognise any of those stars. Gensoukyou maybe?"

She shook her head. "Gensoukyou has the same stars we do."

The paving of the street must have disappeared while we'd been walking without us noticing, for it was sand now crunching beneath our feet. The mist closer to the ground began to melt away and we heard the soft sweeping of water. Were they waves breaking? As the final fragments of the mist floated away in tatters, the great crescent curve of a beach appeared before us. Beyond it, the flatness of the horizon of a great unseen ocean that had been hidden from us glimmered, glazed by the light of the moon. Well, _a_ moon, at least. It was impossibly huge. A great aisle of light shimmered across the water to us from it, like the path to some celestial palace. The sky around it was a starburst of glistening points, diadem drifts of stars, the shores of some alien galaxy.

"Wherever we are, it's beautiful," I said. "Too beautiful to be anywhere on Earth. I guess this must all be a dream, then."

The air all about us was warm, but Merry clung closer to me, hanging off my arm. She rested her head on my shoulder.

"Renko, I'm tired. Can we stop for a minute?"

All at once I realised how tired I was as well.

It was warm enough for Merry to take off her coat and lay it on the sand, and I put my shawl down next to it. We sat down and gazed out across the ocean. Above us, stars I had never seen before tried to outshine the moon. A great sparkling stream of them, like a bejewelled rainbow, arced from horizon to horizon. It was the kind of sight I'd often dreamed of, both as a child and as an adult, a mysterious destination far off in the reaches of space.

It wasn't Hell. It might even have been Heaven.

Merry placed her hand on mine and smiled at me.

Well, if not Heaven, then at least some beautiful dream.

I looked along the beach in the direction we'd come from. How had we ended up in such a strange place? I wondered if it was possible to see the lights of Kyoto somewhere out there, if the two places were still somehow connected.

My heart skipped a beat when I saw the footprints in the sand. Two sets of them. Our own.

I ran trembling fingers across the surface of the sand beside me, leaving deep tracks in it. I lifted up a handful of glittering grains, let them pour down like a shower of gold.

"Merry," I began. "I... I don't think this is a dream. I think this is somewhere _real_."

She smiled at me. In the moonlight her face had become ethereal and I felt something of the divine about her then, just as I had that time we'd travelled to the moon.

"Renko, do you still really believe dreams and reality are separate things? Even after we've crossed the borders together so many times?"

Resting her head on my shoulder she lifted a hand to my neck, letting her fingers slip across the skin behind my ear.

"Merry," I said, taking her hand and kissing it.

She began to loosen my tie and I made some weak protest about needing to shower.

Merry just laughed. "We can have a swim in the ocean, if you want."

"Won't we catch cold?"

"I think it's warm enough, here."

I gazed up at the sky as she slid the tie off from around my neck. "I wonder where 'here' is, exactly."

Merry's eyes shone. "You still haven't recognised this place yet, Renko? You should. I realised a short while ago. A place this beautiful could only be your heart."

She leaned forward, parting her still-smiling lips, and I knew what was going to happen next. This time I didn't go stiff. Instead I melted into her arms as her mouth met mine. I let Merry kiss me, opening my lips to greet her tongue with my own, pulling her against me as if trying to draw her into myself.

After we broke the kiss, Merry brought her fingers to her lips "It's so strange," she whispered. "I... it's like I've kissed you before."

I laughed, partly from pure joy, partly from the strange thought I'd just had, my heart still racing from the kiss. "Merry, promise me you won't laugh?"

Her violet eyes were questioning.

"Back in Tokyo, when you were staying with me, I had a dream. About you."

"What kind of dream?"

I blushed. "We were in Gensoukyou. In the Garden of the Sun. You found me wandering there, and then we..."

Merry's eyes went wide. "...we sat together in the moonlight, just like this, and I kissed you."

"Merry, you don't mean?"

She smiled shyly at me. "I always thought it was just a dream. A normal one, I mean."

I hugged her, burying myself in her fragrant warmth. "You know, I'm really glad. I'm glad it was you who took my first kiss and not some dream."

Her smile grew teasing, and I was suddenly reminded of the violet-eyed woman's. "So, does the real Merry kiss better than the dream one?"

"About the same," I said, my blush deepening. "But I'm not sure. I think I might need a few more experimental results in order to arrive at a proper conclusion."

Merry, giggling, leaned forward and kissed me again. This time it grew hot, and hard, her tongue slipping into my mouth as she lay me back on the sand.

We made love, the moonlight flooding over us. Merry's naked body, her skin so pale to the point of translucency, seemed to be made of the same shining material the moon was. I was frightened to touch her at first, she looked so fragile and beautiful, but then she took my hands in hers and showed me where she liked to be touched, and I did the same for her. We said nothing to each other. The only sounds were the gasps and murmurs of our mutual pleasure. Even here, in this strange in-between place, I struggled to remain quiet, embarrassed despite the solitude, worried that someone might hear us, but when Merry's mouth grazed my sides, her lips and tongue slipping across my ribs, I couldn't stop myself from crying out.

She seemed delighted that she'd finally forced such a violent reaction from me and straddling me, her breasts pressed down against mine, she attacked my mouth with kisses that were almost bites.

The force of her lovemaking surprised me. I submitted to her, letting her mouth and hands roam wherever they would, allowed her to take whatever she wanted.

Afterwards we lay there together, naked, on her coat. Merry's head rested on my chest, her blonde hair, wild and matted with perspiration, lying across my breasts. She brushed my lower stomach lightly with her fingertips. This was more the Merry I had expected. The gentleness of her touch sent thrills through me.

She gazed up at me, saying nothing, a contented smile on her lips, the eyes beneath her dark lashes alight with the memory of the pleasure she had felt. Soon her lashes fell and her eyelids closed as sleep stole upon her, and it wasn't long until her breathing was the deep and regular one of a person fast asleep.

I was almost asleep myself when I heard the voice. It was one I knew. It startled me, and I would have jerked upright if I wasn't so exhausted. It was a whisper, so faint and yet so clear that it must have come from unseen lips held flush against my ear.

"Watch over her well, Renko," said the voice that belonged to the woman with the violet eyes. "Watch over your little butterfly as she lies dreaming in your arms, dreaming that she's human."

We awoke lying on the bed in Merry's apartment. The first thing I saw was the okapi, staring at me from his new home, the armchair, with doleful, jealous eyes. Then I felt Merry stir and I rolled over to look at her.

She was awake. There was joy in her eyes when she saw me, but it quickly changed to disappointment when she saw where we were. "Oh, Renko... then it was all just a dream?"

I grinned at her. "_Just_ a dream? Merry, I'm surprised to hear you say something like that." Bringing a hand to her face, I brushed off the patch of sand granules stuck to her cheek and showed them to her, the gold sparkling on the tips of my fingers. "Someone once told me there's no such thing as dreams. I think I'm starting to understand what they meant. "

Merry giggled. "I'm just glad we didn't wake up naked on a street corner somewhere. That would have been awkward." Then her voice fell to a whisper. "Do you think it was _her_?"

"I don't know," I lied. It was just another thing I owed the woman with the violet eyes. I knew what I needed to do to repay her, though. The words of her disembodied voice remained with me. I had to protect and cherish the beautiful gift she had given me.

"So, Renko... what do you want to do today?" asked Merry, running her fingers over my collarbone. "The day we came back from Torifune I read that there were reports of tengus being sighted up in the hills around Arashiyama. Do you think the Sealing Club should go and investigate?"

"So your dream world is breaking into this one already?" I laughed. "I feel sorry for the laws of conservation of mass and entropy." Then I shook my head. "Let's leave the tengu alone for the time being. Personally, I think the Sealing Club should stay in bed all day. They've earned it."

"I like that idea," said Merry, and then she leaned across me and planted a kiss on my lips that lingered and grew hot until soon we were in each other's arms again, making love as if we had been together for a thousand years. Maybe we had.

My name is Usami Renko and I'm in love with my best friend...

...and she loves me too.

The End


End file.
